October 15, 2014: Volume LXXXII, No 20

Featuring 433 Industry-First Reviews of Fiction, Nonfiction and Children's & Teen

KIRKUS VOL. LXXXII, NO.

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REVIEWS

Joe Cottonwood gets to the heart of it in his work and in his writing. p. 176

FICTION

Family Furnishings

by Alice Munro A selection of the Nobel laureate’s peerless stories from the past two decades p. 34

CHILDREN'S & TEEN

Earmuffs for Everyone!

by Meghan McCarthy A clever and funny picture-book examination of history as process uses the invention of earmuffs as a case study. p. 151

NONFICTION

The Accidental Superpower

by Peter Zeihan Historical prognostication has a dismal record, but readers will find it difficult to put down this fascinating addition to the “rise and fall of nations” genre. p. 121

on the cover Not paying attention to trends has allowed kids’ author/illustrator Oliver Jeffers to set them, including in his new picture book, Once Upon an Alphabet. p. 140

from the editor’s desk:

The Finalists for the 2014 Kirkus Prize B Y C la i b orne

Photo courtesy Michael Thad Carter

Claiborne Smith

Smi t h

The Kirkus Prize was created to celebrate the 81 years of discerning, thoughtful criticism Kirkus Reviews has contributed to both the publishing industry and readers at large. Slightly more than 1,000 books were eligible for the inaugural 2014 Kirkus Prize in three categories: fiction, nonfiction and young readers’ literature. Each category has three judges who really, really like to read, and I want to thank them for their diligence and thoughtfulness in narrowing all those excellent books down to six finalists, as well as the Kirkus editors and staff members who have been working hard on the Prize. We’ll announce the winner of each category on Thursday, Oct. 23; each of those three winners will receive $50,000.

The finalists for the 2014 Kirkus Prize are: FICTION: • The Blazing World by Siri Hustvedt (Simon & Schuster) • Euphoria by Lily King (Atlantic Monthly Press) • All Our Names by Dinaw Mengestu (Knopf) • Florence Gordon by Brian Morton (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) • The Remedy for Love by Bill Roorbach (Algonquin Books) • The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters (Riverhead) The judges for the 2014 Kirkus Prize in fiction are: author Kate Christensen; Stephanie Valdez, coowner of Community Bookstore and Terrace Books in Brooklyn; and Kirkus critic and author Marion Winik.

NONFICTION: • Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? by Roz Chast (Bloomsbury) • Jonathan Swift: His Life and His World by Leo Damrosch (Yale University Press) • The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert (Henry Holt) • The Lagoon: How Aristotle Invented Science by Armand Marie Leroi (Viking) • Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty (Harvard University Press) • Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson (Spiegel & Grau) The judges for the 2014 Kirkus Prize in Nonfiction are: Sarah Bagby, owner of Watermark Books & Café in Wichita, Kansas; author Sloane Crosley; and Kirkus critic and author Gregory McNamee.

YOUNG READERS’ LITERATURE: Picture Books: • The Right Word: Roget and His Thesaurus by Jen Bryant and Melissa Sweet (Eerdmans) • Aviary Wonders Inc.: Spring Catalog and Instruction Manual by Kate Samworth (Clarion) Middle Grade: • El Deafo by Cece Bell (Amulet/Abrams) • The Key That Swallowed Joey Pigza by Jack Gantos (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) Young Adult: • The Story of Owen, Dragon Slayer of Trondheim by E.K. Johnston (Carolrhoda Lab) • The Freedom Summer Murders by Don Mitchell (Scholastic) The judges for the 2014 Kirkus Prize in Young Readers’ Literature are: Claudette S. McLinn, executive director at the Center for the Study of Multicultural Children’s Literature; author Linda Sue Park; Kirkus critic and children’s librarian John Edward Peters.

for more re vi e ws and f eatures, vi si t u s on l i n e at kirkus.com.

Chairman H E R B E RT S I M O N # President & Publisher M A RC W I N K E L M A N Chief Operating Officer M E G L A B O R D E KU E H N mkuehn@kirkus.com Editor in Chief C laiborne S mith csmith@kirkus.com Managing/Nonfiction Editor E R I C L I E B E T R AU eliebetrau@kirkus.com Fiction Editor L aurie M uchnick lmuchnick@kirkus.com Children’s & Teen Editor VICKY SMITH vsmith@kirkus.com Mysteries Editor THOMAS LEITCH Contributing Editor G R E G O RY M c N A M E E Senior Indie Editor KAREN SCHECHNER kschechner@kirkus.com Indie Editor RYA N L E A H E Y rleahey@kirkus.com Indie Editor D avid R a p p drapp@kirkus.com Assistant Indie Editor M AT T D O M I N O mdomino@kirkus.com Assistant Editor CHELSEA LANGFORD clangford@kirkus.com Copy Editor BETSY JUDKINS Director of Kirkus Editorial JIM SPIVEY jspivey@kirkus.com Director of Technology E R I K S M A RT T esmartt@kirkus.com Marketing Communications Director SARAH KALINA skalina@kirkus.com Marketing Associate A rden Piacen z a apiacenza@kirkus.com Advertising/Client Promotions A nna C oo p er acooper@kirkus.com

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contents fiction

The Kirkus Star is awarded to books of remarkable merit, as determined by the impartial editors of Kirkus.

Index to Starred Reviews............................................................ 5 REVIEWS................................................................................................ 5 editor’s note..................................................................................... 6 Molly Gloss’ Myths....................................................................... 14 Mystery.............................................................................................. 47 Science Fiction & Fantasy.......................................................... 60 Romance............................................................................................64

nonfiction Index to Starred Reviews.......................................................... 69 REVIEWS.............................................................................................. 69 editor’s note................................................................................... 70 Katha Pollitt Takes Risks.......................................................... 84

children’s & teen Index to Starred Reviews.........................................................123 REVIEWS.............................................................................................123 editor’s note................................................................................. 124 On the Cover: Oliver Jeffers................................................. 140 interactive e-books....................................................................165 continuing series....................................................................... 168

indie Index to Starred Reviews........................................................ 169 editor’s note................................................................................. 169 REVIEWS.............................................................................................170 Joe Cottonwood’s Life Lessons............................................ 176

An appreciative and unpretentious chronicle, this is required reading for Carlos Santana fans and devotees of classic rock legends. Read the review on p. 113.

best of indie................................................................................... 186 Appreciations: Peyton Place Is Still Steamy....................187

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on the web humane memoir.” Our interview with Wildman will be on kirkus. com in the second half of October.

Check out these highlights from Kirkus’ online coverage at www.kirkus.com 9

Ten years ago, Azar Nafisi electrified readers with her million-copy best-seller, Reading Lolita in Tehran, which told the story of how, against the backdrop of morality squads and executions, she taught The Great Gatsby and other classics to her eager students in Iran. In this exhilarating follow-up, Nafisi has written the book her fans have been waiting for: an impassioned, beguiling and utterly original tribute to the vital importance of fiction in a democratic society. What Reading Lolita in Tehran was for Iran, The Republic of Imagination is for America. Taking her cue from a challenge thrown to her in Seattle, where a skeptical reader told her that Americans don’t care about books the way they did back in Iran, she energetically responds in The Republic of Imagination to those who say fiction has nothing to teach us. We talk with Nafisi on the Kirkus site this month.

Photo courtesy Oscar A. Zagal

In Brief Encounters: Conversations, Magic Moments and Assorted Hijinks, Dick Cavett, TV’s once-reigning, smarty-pants talk show host, presents his thoughts on some problems, performers and a few civilians he’s known. He introduces us to the fascinating characters who have crossed his path, from James Gandolfini and John Lennon to Mel Brooks and Nora Ephron, enhancing our appreciation of their talents, their personalities and their places in the pantheon. We tag along as Cavett spends an afternoon with Stan Laurel at his modest apartment in Los Angeles, spars with Muhammad Ali at his training camp and comes to know a young Steve Jobs—who woos him to be Apple’s first celebrity pitchman. He also offers piquant commentary on contemporary politics, the indignities of travel, the nature of comedy writing and the utter improbability of being alive at all. We talk to Cavett on Kirkus TV this month.

Photo courtesy Kate Warren

Sarah Wildman’s memoir Paper Love: Searching for the Girl My Grandfather Left Behind is a journalist’s account of how her attempts to learn about her grandfather’s lost true love turned into a quest to understand the place of the Holocaust in her life and the lives of other young Jews. Years after her grandfather’s death, Wildman stumbled upon a cache of his letters in a file labeled “Correspondence: Patients AG.” What she found inside weren’t dry medical histories; instead, what she read opened a path to the destroyed world that was her family’s prewar Vienna. One woman’s letters stood out: those from Valy—Valerie Scheftel, her grandfather’s lover who had remained behind when he fled Europe six months after the Nazis annexed Austria. Our reviewer calls Paper Love “a poignant and

Photo courtesy Stanley Staniski

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9 And be sure to check out our Indie publishing series, featuring some of today’s most intriguing self-published authors. We feature authors’ exclusive personal essays and reported articles on how they achieved their success in publishing. It’s a must-read resource for any aspiring author interested in getting readers to notice their new books.

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fiction TEHRAN AT TWILIGHT

These titles earned the Kirkus Star:

Abdoh, Salar Akashic (242 pp.) $15.95 paper | Oct. 7, 2014 978-1-61775-292-6

FAR AS THE EYE CAN SEE by Robert Bausch.....................................8 SUGAR SKULL by Charles Burns; illus. by Charles Burns.................. 9

Called back home to Tehran by a mysterious friend with whom he went to Berkeley, an Iranian academic, Malek, is drawn into a world of trouble.

Having hoped for greater fortunes with his doctorate in Middle Eastern studies and his experience as an interpreter in Iraq and Afghanistan, Malek has accepted a well-paying but middlingstatus job teaching “creative reportage” in Harlem. His wealthy friend Sina, who has developed into a rabid antiAmerican, is now aligned with a reactionary organization in Tehran. Partly out of misguided loyalty and partly out of curiosity, Malek agrees to help him on a mysterious matter involving big money. Against his better judgment, Malek accepts power of attorney over Sina’s holdings, making himself a target of shady figures including the double-dealing agent Fani. In post-revolutionary Iran, corruption and violence abound. Reunited with his mother, whom he hasn’t seen since he was a child, Malek gets even more over his head by trying to get her a passport so she can immigrate to the U.S. The Iranian-born Abdoh (Opium, 2004, etc.), who himself divides his time between New York and Tehran, expertly evokes the tense atmosphere in Tehran and the chaos preceding an election. But the novel is talky, a failing not helped by the flatness of the dialogue, and much of the foreign intrigue seems secondhand.

A penetrating look into contemporary Tehran, Abdoh’s latest novel is less than satisfying as a thriller.

GRAIL KNIGHT by Angus Donald....................................................... 13 HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT by Nuruddin Farah..................................19 THE HILLTOP by Assaf Gavron.......................................................... 20 THE DEVIL’S TUB by Edward Hoagland........................................... 29 THE ASSASSINATION OF MARGARET THATCHER

by Hilary Mantel..................................................................................32 THE LIVES OF OTHERS by Neel Mukherjee.......................................34 FAMILY FURNISHINGS by Alice Munro............................................34 INTO A RAGING BLAZE by Andreas Norman; trans. by Ian Giles.................................................................................36 NEW YORK 1, TEL AVIV 0 by Shelly Oria.......................................... 37 SOMETHING RICH AND STRANGE by Ron Rash.............................41 THE PARIS WINTER by Imogen Robertson.........................................41 THE BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY OF LITERARY FAILURE

by C.D. Rose......................................................................................... 42 BAD COUNTRY by CB McKenzie....................................................... 55 THE THREE-BODY PROBLEM by Cixin Liu; trans. by Ken Liu........63 ROGUE SPY by Joanna Bourne............................................................65 THE ACCIDENTAL COUNTESS by Valerie Bowman.........................65

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The 2014 Kirkus Prize for Fiction Finalists: Six Absorbing Novels BABOON

Next week, we’ll be announcing the winners of the first annual Kirkus Prizes, and we couldn’t be more excited. Though I’m not a judge for the fiction award, I’ve been working closely with our three judges—novelist Kate Christensen; Stephanie Valdez, coowner of Community Bookstore and Terrace Books in Brooklyn; and Marion Winik, a writer and Kirkus reviewer—and I’ve been awed by their dedication to the process, as well as the joy they’ve taken in reading the eclectic group of books that received starred Kirkus reviews in the past year.

Since the prize was created in May, the judges and I have been having conference calls every two weeks to discuss what they’ve been reading and what books each of them was eager to have their fellow judges read right away.

They spent time talking about what they were looking for in the finalists and the eventual winner (to be announced on Oct. 23) and decided they wanted to find books they were passionate about, not just impressed by; books they wanted to press on all their friends with the words, “Read this!” Dinaw Mengestu’s All Our Names is written in the first person; Lily King’s Euphoria, Brian Morton’s Florence Gordon, Bill Roorbach’s The Remedy for Love and Sarah Waters’ The Paying Guests are written in the third person; and Siri Hustvedt’s The Blazing World is told from a variety of points of view: What they all have in common is a compelling narrative voice that pulls you in and won’t let you stop reading.

I often freeze when people ask me what they should read next; since Kirkus reviews books months ahead of publication date, I’m usually reading something that hasn’t come out yet, which doesn’t do my friends much good.

This list of Kirkus Prize finalists will give me the perfect recommendation list for the next year, and I hope you’ll check them out soon. —L.M.

Aidt, Naja Marie Translated by Newman, Denise Two Lines Press (208 pp.) $12.95 paper | Oct. 14, 2014 978-1-931883-38-2 Danish poet Aidt presents 15 short stories that glance at modern disconnectedness.

It takes some courage to open a book with a description of “an astonishing landscape,” but Aidt begins with this implicit boast, confident that her work can take readers to places they’ve never been. The characters in this “astonishing landscape” are a vacationing married couple with a child.

As the story unfolds, secrets come out and an accident occurs, leading husband and wife into the ellipses of their relationship. The story—which recalls European art films like Rossellini’s Journey to Italy and Kiarostami’s Certified Copy—stuns.

But the rest of the collection adopts the same elliptical style, and the result, as a whole, is fascinating, frustrating and cold.

Some stories—like “Interruption,” in which a man deals with a strange woman who has inexplicably moved into his apartment, and “Wounds,” in which a visitor to a city stumbles reluctantly into a fraught friendship—are wondrous, with vast loneliness underlying each syllable. But other stories seem like mere sketches, captured moments whose blurred edges struggle to suggest something important in their absence. “This is so incredibly banal,” one character thinks, “and yet it’s so important.”

Capturing the importance in banality is Aidt’s laudable aim here, and many of these stories demonstrate a poet’s interest in turning a moment over and looking at it from all sides. But lined up as these moments are, the resulting book becomes occasionally dull, with many stories turning to (or, some might say, devolving into) grotesque sexuality as a quick way to inject intrigue into the “banal.” Too bad—Aidt is a much better writer of short fiction than she often allows herself to be here.

A collection whose individual pieces fascinate but whose overall effect feels diluted by repetition. (Author tour to Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New York, Oakland, San Francisco and Seattle)

Laurie Muchnick is the fiction editor at Kirkus Reviews.

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THE BREATH OF NIGHT

whose acquaintance may not immediately bring God to mind.

He meets poor people who go hungry when city refuse collections stop, because there’s no garbage to pick through. This is a sometimes-dark story with an interesting structure, alternating between Philip’s point of view and long, personal letters Julian wrote to his parents and brother. So is Julian worthy of sainthood, of being one of the “rungs on the ladder to God”?

Maybe so, if the local bishop can have Julian “sanitized as well as sanctified.” Or maybe not, if Julian is seen as “first and foremost a liberator.” Once the Marcos family is through exploiting their citizens, along comes Corazon Aquino, who apparently is little better. So where do “decent Christians” of the Philippines go? “Into the arms of the Communists.” Religion provides the framework of this story about the search for social justice.

Perhaps the best of many good lines is: “To listen to one’s conscience is to hear the authentic voice of God.” Don’t expect feel-good, old-time religion here, but you can expect a satisfying storyline in this thoughtful, wellwritten novel.

Arditti, Michael Arcadia Books (387 pp.) $20.00 paper | Nov. 4, 2014 978-1-909807-66-2

A complicated mystery that explores whether a murdered priest deserves sainthood for his work in the Philippines.

An Anglican himself, Philip Seward is hired to learn about the life of Father Julian Tremayne, whose former parishioners petition the Catholic Church to declare him a saint. One of their claims is that he levitated during Mass, which the church cares about but which is tough for Philip to verify 30 years after the fact. Also, a saint “has to be full of humanity and not just of God.” In the process of his investigation, Philip discovers a great deal about Philippine culture, especially among the downtrodden. His research brings him into contact with prostitutes, male strippers and others

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THE ESCAPE

assistant successfully vanish from the audience’s view. Unfortunately, London’s interest in magic shows has subsided, and Mr. Brookes fires his female assistants with regularity. There are long scenes describing precisely how the tricks work (or fail to work), and instead of being revealing, they feel procedural and tedious. The narrator rather unsuccessfully addresses the reader in the second person, as if we are audience members watching the show: “As you can see, the Lady is indeed missing.” This creates a flatness in the prose, removing elements of surprise from the story. Reggie looks like he might be out of work, but things turn around, and Mr. Brookes picks up a gig in a new place, Brighton, and a new, more self-assured female assistant named Pamela, who takes the job thinking, “How hard can being made to disappear be?” Unfortunately, Pamela, like those who preceded her, finds herself under Mr. Brookes’ thumb. It’s Reggie’s friendship that saves the day when he uses a bit of magic he’s learned to turn the tables on his unkind employer.

This all feels familiar from various Dickens stories—the orphan, the orphan’s patrons, the illusions, the unfriendly businessmen, the saviors—and the 1950s setting isn’t enough to refresh the great expectations.

Baldacci, David Grand Central Publishing (432 pp.) $28.00 | Nov. 18, 2014 978-1-4555-2119-7 Steel-jawed John Puller is back for another round with the bad guys in Baldacci’s latest action thriller.

Puller’s equally virile and handsome brother, Robert, an Air Force major, is serving time in the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, following his conviction on charges of treason. As the book opens, he performs a seemingly impossible escape from his cell. John, an investigator with the CID, the Army’s investigative arm, is charged by an odd coalition of three powerful men—a one-star Air Force general, a threestar Army general and a representative of the National Security Council—with the improbable task of finding his brother. Robert, though, isn’t waiting to be caught. He’s changed his appearance, hacked into a national database, bought a car and headed out to clear himself. Standing in his way is the mysterious fact that an unidentified dead body has been found in his recently vacated cell. While John and his disgraced brother go at the case from different angles, another investigator also comes into play. Capt. Veronica Knox teams up with a reluctant John, looking for his brother and piecing together the method behind his escape, even though it’s soon apparent that many others are also on his trail. Not surprisingly, John and Knox engage in a lot of pre-romantic verbal fencing and meaningful looks. But though the action is fast and furious, the characters never rise beyond the stereotypical. The good guys are predictably skilled, noble and racing against time, while their opposites exude evil. Baldacci punches up the action but often drifts into painfully stilted dialogue and pointless wardrobe descriptions.

A book that will entertain some readers but won’t linger after the final page.

FAR AS THE EYE CAN SEE

Bausch, Robert Bloomsbury (320 pp.) $26.00 | Nov. 4, 2014 978-1-62040-259-7 Bausch (Out of Season, 2005, etc.) rides into frontier America for a tale of a Civil War veteran weary of “trouble and slaughter.”

Bobby Hale was a Union soldier— several times. He “skedaddled”—enlisted, took the bonus, deserted and enlisted again. Even so, Hale was in the ranks at bloody Fredericksburg and Chickamauga. Bausch’s battle descriptions flash and roar—“I shot into smoke and noise... wounded men caught fire where they lay...even now the screams keep echoing in my skull.” In 1869, equipped with a Colt Dragoon, an Evans repeater rifle, and his mare, Cricket, Hale hooks onto a pioneer wagon train led by a man named Theo and his Crow scout, Big Tree, “six and a half feet tall and solid as stone.”

En route to Oregon, they winter in Montana. Hale and Big Tree head into the Rockies to trap, an adventure lasting years. Then a Sioux woman, who’d latched onto Hale, decides she prefers Big Tree. Hale repairs to Fort Ellis, Montana, and winters in a Conestoga wagon with widows Christine and Eveline—“Those two women give me respite from strife and struggle”—before enlisting as a scout. Bausch’s research makes real the violent period—sowbelly and hardtack, militias murdering Indians, freezing blizzards. Scouting, Hale kills White Dog, a warrior who’d earlier killed Big Tree. But White Dog was part of a peace party, and Hale deserts. On the run, Hale accidentally wounds Ink, a half-breed captive fleeing her husband. The pair stumble onto the Battle of Little Big Horn, “ground...littered with dead

THE DISAPPEARANCE BOY

Bartlett, Neil Bloomsbury (320 pp.) $26.00 | Oct. 28, 2014 978-1-62040-725-7

In post–World War II England, an orphan named Reggie Rainbow struggles to make ends meet as a “disappearance boy”—the invisible helper of a struggling illusionist.

Reggie is first introduced as an orphan standing nearly naked in rags on a railroad track, hoping that if he dies he will be reunited with his dead mother, who he imagines is an angel. Instead, he’s whisked off the rails; the next time we see him after this dramatic, Dickensian setup, he’s a young adult on his way to work. His unusual job is to hide in small contraptions to help make the illusionist Mr. Brookes’ female 8

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“A fittingly audacious finale to an artistically ambitious trilogy....” from sugar skull

SUGAR SKULL

horses and dead soldiers and a few Indians,” before trekking into the “land of the Nez Perce...where Ink is certain we can be happy, and live in peace.”

With a setting gleaming with historical accuracy and a protagonist whose voice is right out of Twain, Bausch’s novel is a worthy addition to America’s Western literary canon, there to share shelf space with The Big Sky, Little Big Man and Lonesome Dove.

Burns, Charles Illus. by Burns, Charles Pantheon (64 pp.) $23.00 | Sep. 16, 2014 978-0-307-90790-5 The third volume in a trilogy concludes a renowned graphic artist’s hallucinatory descent into comic-book hell—and it doesn’t end prettily.

The size and format of the traditional comic book perfectly suits the darker vision of Burns, who’s reinforced his reputation through work in magazines such as the New Yorker but lets his demons run wild here. Without ever resorting to a linear narrative, he concludes the story of Doug that began in X’ed Out (2010) and continued with The Hive (2012). Sober for more than a year, he suffers a massive relapse when he returns to his former punk-rock haunts and sees some people who would rather not see him. Yet his dream life and waking life aren’t clearly delineated, for Doug

A SONG TO DIE FOR

Blakely, Mike Forge (352 pp.) $24.99 | Nov. 18, 2014 978-0-7653-2751-2

In his modern Texas whodunit, Blakely melds a Las Vegas Mafioso tale into the Austin music scene.

It’s 1975, and Creed Mason has come back to Texas just as alt-country is taking off. Creed’s a Vietnam vet with a Purple Heart; he’s bitter because his one-time singing partner, Dixie Houston, parlayed his talent into her own fame after he was drafted. Blakely’s Texas tale widens its trail to follow Austinbound Rosabella Martini, who’s running from her Vegas wiseguy uncle Paulo. Rosabella was adopted, and so there was no blood loyalty in play after she stumbled on her cousin Franco cleaning up a mob hit. Franco’s trailed her to Texas and made her his next victim. Next enters Luster Burnett, a legendary but long-retired country musician with a “tone as smooth as an aged whiskey.” Luster’s manager shot himself, leaving the singer with gambling markers—some held by Paulo Martini—an IRS lien and the need to get out on the road to sell some records.

Creed meets Luster at a poker game and ends up as his band leader, which gives the author, a professional musician, a chance to display his chops writing about the bus-riding, beer-drinking, honky-tonk life of a work-a-day guitar player, right down to the barroom gigs where fights spread “like ripples from a rock tossed into the corner of a pool of nitroglycerin.” Blakely’s grip on 1970s social transitions shines as well as he describes a land where folks were still trying to work out who’s “colored” and who can be called “boy” as he brings in African-American FBI Special Agent Mel Doolittle, on Paulo’s case in Vegas, to partner with Texas Ranger Hooley Johnson, who’s investigating Rosabella’s murder. Toss in fishing, floating poker games, a precis on songwriting and a fiddler with a propensity for puking, and Blakely brings it all together with a Las Vegas shootout and an unanticipated payoff.

A little dark to be a comic caper, but with an original plot and Texas-true characterizations, it’s a top-notch mystery.

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IF I KNEW YOU WERE GOING TO BE THIS BEAUTIFUL, I NEVER WOULD HAVE LET YOU GO

or for the reader, and whatever state he’s in, he fears, “[n]o matter what I do, I’ll never get rid of that voice in my head.” Framing and interweaving Doug’s narrative is the even more nightmarish descent of the bandaged boy Johnny, like Alice down the rabbit hole, through a stack of skulls, a reunion with his cat and a deep sleep that finds him awakening to a nightmare that might be worse than his nightmare. Identities blur as plot points in both narratives involve romance comics, unexpected pregnancies and women as agents of healing for deeply bruised young men. But the art carries the weight here and rewards repeat viewings, as the text resists summary and paraphrase. Like a dream or a very bad acid trip, what often defies linear logic makes connections on a subliminal, surreal plane.

A fittingly audacious finale to an artistically ambitious trilogy, one that pays homage to the comic books of old yet takes the art to another, weirder level. (full-color illustrations throughout)

Chicurel, Judy Putnam (288 pp.) $25.95 | Oct. 30, 2014 978-0-399-16707-2

A vivid portrayal of the disappointed young adults in Elephant Beach, a fading East Coast seaside town, in 1972. Beware the seductive lure of sex, drugs, and rock and roll.

The world-weary proprietor of a local hangout tells Katie, the 18-year-old narrator of this affecting debut short story collection, “You’re different than the other kids around here. You want my advice? Get out of Dodge. Now.” But in the summer after her high school graduation, there is some life lesson that Katie needs to learn from this on-the-skids town and her colorful, chain-smoking friends. Everyone around her is trying to escape the challenging circumstances that surround them in this working-class community. The women’s dreams are quickly crushed in evanescent sexual affairs, which end in abandonment, arguments, abortions or just male indifference; the men they get involved with are too troubled or immature or stoned to be dependable partners. The rest of the country, roiling from the Vietnam War, seems distant, as does nearby Manhattan.

Katie’s friends are both contemptuous and jealous of the occasional hippie or privileged student who drifts by. Mitch, who lost a leg in Vietnam and is drinking himself to death, is the poster boy for those unable to withstand the vicissitudes of life.

Katie, who comes from a more affluent family but works at an A&P, is obsessed with Luke, an elusive, recently returned vet; she is also grappling with her own adoption. What makes the desperation that abounds compelling is Chicurel’s perfect pitch for the characters’ patter, which is blunt, cynical, often profane and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny.

Will Katie get her man? Will she make a break from this hard-luck population? The author’s masterful writing makes this short stay in Elephant Beach worthwhile.

MIRACLE GIRLS

Caschetta, MB Engine Books (288 pp.) $14.95 paper | Nov. 11, 2014 978-1-938126-15-4 In upstate New York, young girls go missing, nuns are revolting, Nixon is resigning, and young Cee-Cee Bianco has visions of the Virgin Mary in this polished debut novel.

Ten-year-old Cee-Cee has a broken family: Father Frank goes on drunken benders, mother Glory runs away for weeks at a time, middle brother Roadie is wracked with guilt over his burgeoning homosexuality, and eldest Anthony is...a little off. Cee-Cee and Baby Pauly cling to each other, as close as twins. One cold day Anthony lures the kids into the woods behind the house, and as something terrible, miraculous, mysterious happens to Cee-Cee there, a chorus of saints advises her on how to save Pauly, who has fallen into a frozen pond while running for help. Cee-Cee eventually wakes from a fever, but Pauly, alive despite spending hours under the ice, is at a rehabilitation center on life support. Cee-Cee is brought to live with her Nonna, who lives across from the Sisters of the Order of Christ’s Most Precious Wounds; with her visions and messages, Cee-Cee is a favorite of the nuns, particularly the Mother General, Sister Amanda. Sister Amanda, secretly working for a number of progressive causes (and suspected by the FBI of building bombs), funnels an army of young women, always in pairs and all called Miranda, through Nonna’s spare room before moving them on to some other task. Girls disappear, Cee-Cee’s friend Mary Margaret keeps burying baby brothers and sisters, Roadie claims CeeCee’s attacker wore a blue jacket just like Father Giuseppe, but the dangers “out there” feel much closer, more threatening, and it’s up to Cee-Cee to find the truth, which might take a miracle.

Short story writer (Lucy on the West Coast, 1996) Caschetta’s first novel is filled with a kind of dark poetry and the menace of ordinary evils.

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“Following Bosch’s trail is like watching Lew Archer in the glory days of Ross Macdonald....” from the burning room

THE BURNING ROOM

guaranteed to bring the crazies out of the woodwork, and one of the callers tells Bosch’s very junior new partner, Detective Lucia Soto, that the shooting is linked to a 1993 fire at the Bonnie Brae apartments that killed nine victims, most of them children. Since Soto survived that fire as a child and had friends who didn’t, she comes to full alert when the anonymous tipster claims Merced was killed because he knew who set the fire. The two crimes are both linked, it turns out, to another crime, the violent robbery of an EZBank the same day as the Bonnie Brae arson. Though the felonies may be ancient, Connelly (The Gods of Guilt, 2013, etc.) maintains a rapid pace, steadily increasing the tension even after the solution becomes obvious. Following Bosch’s trail is like watching Lew Archer in the glory days of Ross Macdonald, except Connelly’s focus is social, political and ultimately professional rather than psychological.

Expect Bosch to uncover a nest of vipers as powerful as they are untouchable, but don’t expect him to emerge from his Herculean labors a happy man.

Connelly, Michael Little, Brown (400 pp.) $28.00 | $14.99 e-book | $30.00 Lg. Prt. Nov. 3, 2014 978-0-316-22593-9 978-0-316-22592-2 e-book 978-0-316-41090-0 Lg. Prt. The latest and most intricate of Harry Bosch’s cold cases (The Black Box, 2012, etc.) begins with a victim who’s still cool-

ing off in the morgue.

Orlando Merced was shot 10 years ago by a sniper who fired into his band, Los Reyes Jalisco, as it played on Mariachi Plaza. He’s just now died of blood poisoning, but the coroner’s office is calling it murder, since the cause was the bullet that’s been lodged in his body all these years. Ex–Los Angeles mayor Armando Zeyas, who can’t resist grandstanding on behalf of the dead man who played at his wedding, offers a $50,000 reward

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A QUILT FOR CHRISTMAS

mass.” His father expounds at length on the virtues of watchmaking, while his mother leaves the apartment frequently, prompting questions each time about whether she will return.

The narrator lusts over a neighbor, and his gaze is described in visceral, discomfortingly intimate terms—as is his way of watching the world in general. Though his bibliophily is presented more clinically, he entertains notions of peeling cataracts from his father’s eyes in one memorably squirm-inducing passage.

None of the characters are named, and the events play out like memories, sometimes in a linear fashion, sometimes following more thematic paths. These are characters forced to dwell in the past, their futures uncertain. Together with the single location and the sense of displacement, these elements combine to create a sense of harrowing isolation. This is a slow-burning novel of characters slowly discovering their inner natures, be they impotent, stifled or predatory. While the dreamlike tension can occasionally frustrate, Daoud’s evocation of history as it is experienced is excellent. His characters live through momentous events, but their struggles to survive land them in a kind of purgatory.

A novel that defies expectations as it summons up the displacement and dehumanization that can come with war.

Dallas, Sandra St. Martin’s (256 pp.) $17.99 paper | $9.99 e-book Oct. 14, 2014 978-1-250-04594-2 978-1-4668-4608-1 e-book

A Union soldier’s wife wonders what happened to the quilt she sent him for Christmas, even as she adjusts to widowhood and creates a new life with other women touched by war.

Kansas settlers Eliza and Will share a deep love and a strong marriage, and she’s convinced he’ll come back from serving in the Union Army. Sending him a quilt patterned after the Union flag, Eliza is pleased to be able to give him a Christmas gift that will keep him warm through the winter. She’s stunned when she learns of his death a month later. She wonders fleetingly what happened to the quilt but finds she must focus on surviving the grief of losing him, while keeping their farm running and their teenage children healthy. Having taken in Missouri Ann, a more vulnerable widow, and her young daughter, Eliza is at first worried as to how she will keep everyone fed, but she finds Missouri Ann to be a great comfort and friend, and they both grow closer to the women in their quilting bee, all of whom have husbands fighting in the war or lost to it. As the fighting grinds to a close, Eliza’s friendships and moral compass are tested when she must decide whether to help an escaped slave Missouri Ann’s inlaws are coming after. When Missouri Ann leaves Kansas soon after to seek gold and a new life, Eliza is left alone to deal with wandering veterans and the surprising answer to the mystery of the lost quilt, plus her own possible second chance at happiness. Dallas takes an interesting look at the lives of women left behind during the Civil War, especially in ambivalent Kansas, and grounds her characters in authentic struggles of love and hate, right and wrong, trespasses and forgiveness.

Elegant, thought-provoking and quietly powerful.

TUNNEL VISION

Davis, Aric Thomas & Mercer (322 pp.) $15.95 paper | $9.99 e-book | Oct. 1, 2014 978-1-4778-2495-5 978-1-4778-7494-3 e-book A gritty noir that strives to remake Raymond Chandler for a younger audience—and mostly succeeds.

This novel by Davis (The Fort, 2013, etc.) reintroduces teen PI Nickel, tough as nails but with a vulnerable heart. Fresh from a revenge mission in upstate Michigan, he’s trying to get his life put back together.

Accepting a job that should be easy surveillance, he instead finds himself embroiled in a 15-year-old mystery. At the center are Betty and June, two restless teens who, when they discover that June’s aunt Mandy was murdered and her boyfriend, rotting in prison, may be innocent, set out to solve the crime as a school project. The narrative alternates between Nickel’s first-person reflection on his life, the case and his attraction to Betty and third-person narration that offers a wider lens, with the occasional chapter taken from Mandy’s diary. Though it takes a little while for these three different voices to coalesce, the structure begins to feel seamless after a few chapters, and the novel is driven quite satisfactorily to its hard-boiled conclusion. Nickel channels Chandler’s jaded detective Philip Marlowe and his peers; his voice is at once old-fashioned and street-smart, and he reveals hints of his tragic past as he works to “try and do the things regular people won’t do, see things they refuse to see.” For her part, Betty is a tough and sympathetic female counterpart.

Who knew Grand Rapids had such a seedy underbelly?

Edgy, stylistic fun.

THE PENGUIN’S SONG

Daoud, Hassan Translated by Booth, Marilyn City Lights (228 pp.) $14.95 paper | Nov. 1, 2014 978-0-87286-623-2

Daoud’s claustrophobic novel hauntingly conveys one family’s isolation after being relocated during the Lebanese civil war.

Displaced by war, the family at the center of the story has left its home in the old city of Beirut for a space more sheltered from the ongoing combat. The narrator, a young man, writes of days spent in isolation reading. He silently observes the interactions of the people around him and ponders his own body, described at one point as “a sickly white 12

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THE FRAGILE WORLD

just wants the grail as loot. Alan’s and Robin’s personalities have already been well fleshed out in earlier novels, but the best character here is Nur, Alan’s disfigured and crazed former lover. Fans of the series already know her, but finally she is at her howling best. All the books drip with gore and with cleavage of the worst kind (alas, no sex), so squeamish readers ought to avoid the whole series. Heroes and foes fight battles both countless and often pointless because it’s what they do—slaughter each other in the name of the Prince of Peace. That said, Donald writes great battle scenes. Although “the ice snake of fear slithered in [Alan’s] stomach” before an early encounter, he later “took a firm double grip on the handle of Fidelity and waded into the battle like a man charging into the sea.” Later, one slice from his sword Fidelity “rent [the cowardly killer’s] body from shoulder to waist, his torso flipping open obscenely like a sliced plum.” And against desperate odds, he and his band “poured pots of boiling water on the men below and jeered at their scalded screams.” Then, when everything has long since cooled down, Alan realizes the great power of faith and belief.

A fine escape for lovers of blood and gore from days of yore.

DeBoard, Paula Treick Harlequin (432 pp.) $14.95 paper | Oct. 28, 2014 978-0-7783-1676-3

A seemingly perfect family is shattered when the eldest child, Daniel, is killed in a bizarre road accident in DeBoard’s (The Mourning Hours, 2013) second novel.

When a late-night phone call informs the Kaufmans of the tragedy in Oberlin, Ohio, the remaining family members follow differing paths of grief. The story is told from the perspective of teenage daughter Olivia, who’s developed a myriad of anxieties, and father Curtis, a high school teacher who’s unable to accept that this horrifying accident might truly have been just an accident. While wife and mother Kathleen focuses on moving on after the event she sees as “a freak thing,” Curtis is swallowed by his anger and grief. The marriage splits, and Kathleen moves back to her childhood home in Omaha, while Curtis and Olivia tailspin in Sacramento. Five years after the accident, Curtis receives a letter that the man responsible for Daniel’s death has been released from prison early. When a school activity results in a frightening episode with Curtis refusing to leave the roof, all while Olivia deals with the consequences of her deteriorating academic record, it’s time for a change of scenery. Taking a leave of absence with the promise that Olivia will keep up with her schoolwork, Curtis hatches a shaky plan to enact revenge, setting off on a road trip with Olivia in tow. While Curtis plans his encounter with his son’s killer, Olivia uses the time in the car as an opportunity to confront her crippling phobias. There are plenty of tender father-daughter moments along the way, which serve as an interesting contrast to Curtis’ inner turmoil as he struggles with his sense of duty to Daniel.

A thoughtful and often surprising examination of family life after a tragedy.

GRAIL KNIGHT

Donald, Angus St. Martin’s (432 pp.) $27.99 | $14.99 e-book | Nov. 11, 2014 978-1-250-05670-2 978-1-4668-6067-4 e-book The fifth book in The Outlaw Chronicles (Warlord, 2013, etc.) concludes Robin Hood’s quest for the Holy Grail with an unholy trail of blood and a damn good story.

Narrator Sir Alan Dale is a devout Christian (in his own mind) who will follow the heathen Robin Hood anywhere. With a small band of friends, they leave England in hopes of finding the sacred bowl Christ once drank from 1,200 years earlier. Mere droplets of water that have touched the grail will cure any sickness, they believe. Sir Alan’s beloved wife, Godifa, or Goody, has fallen terribly ill, so his aim is to cure her, but Robin |

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INTERVIEWS & PROFILES

Molly Gloss

The writer’s new novel asks how the cowboy myth influences those of us who aren’t cowboys

By Megan Labrise Told by Bud from the vantage of old age, Falling From Horses is his story of a transformative year spent as a cowboy movie stunt rider, interwoven with reminiscences of childhood up to and including his sister Mary Claudine’s death.

Unmoored by the loss, Bud leaves the ranch for the rodeo but soon moves on to a bigger, more dangerous destination. “Jobs were still hard to come by in those days, but they were making cheap cowboy pictures as fast as they could churn them out, and I met a bronc rider at the Burns Roundup who told me you could get work down there if you could fall off a horse without breaking any bones. Or, if you broke one, at least not cry about it,” Gloss writes.

Down there is Hollywood, California, where Bud is anxious to press his luck. On a southbound bus, Bud meets Lily Shaw, a slip of a young woman from Seattle, whose carriage belies her grand ambition—to become a famous screenwriter, and soon. Her story, as told by Bud, throws his recklessness into high relief: She knows all about town from reading movie magazines and has a comfortable bed and a job lined up.

He’s got the clothes on his back and barely enough to cover one night in a cut-rate hotel.

“Lily Shaw was the most straightforward, unconcealed person I’ve ever known, and she had a bold streak in her already, like she was heading to Hollywood to burn down the town. It’s one of the reasons I took to her. But I should tell you right now: when we met, I was the one who was more reckless. I had been nursing a dangerous streak for a couple of years, which she took for boldness, and I imagine this is one of the reasons she took to me,” she writes.

The difference between bold and reckless boils down to intention, Gloss says by phone from her home in Portland, Oregon. “Boldness means you’re willing to

Photo courtesy Gretchen Corbett

Some characters stay with us long after the last page turns. Those left pondering spirited Martha Lessen, who broke horses and gender barriers circa 1917 in Molly Gloss’ The Hearts of Horses, will meet her as a supporting player, two decades hence, in Falling From Horses, Gloss’ new novel.

In 1938, Martha’s married to sensitive cowboy Henry Frazer, and they’re still ranching, shoulder to shoulder. They’ve had two children, a boy and a girl— and a fair share of misfortune, as we learn from their son, Bud. “My folks were still living up in Oregon in 1938, but they had lost the Echol Creek ranch a few months after my sister died and were back to hiring themselves out, taking work wherever they could get it, like they’d done before I was born,” Gloss writes.

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accept the risks, but reckless means you’re deliberately putting yourself at risk. Bud’s not suicidal—nothing like that—but he’s certainly reckless at the beginning, and I think, too, he’s looking to get away from his parents, from everything that he knows. What he’s going to learn is ‘everywhere you go, there you are,’ but he doesn’t know that yet,” she says.

Stunt riding is plenty dangerous work—not that Bud can find any. Desperate, he takes a job chauffeuring horses to the set, familiarizing himself with the city’s layout while awaiting his big break—and Gloss’ 1930s Hollywood is pitch-perfect, the evidence of meticulous research, for which she’s known. “I’m looking at two bookshelves that are 5 feet long, full of books, crammed with books, all for this book,” she says, “and that doesn’t count the ones I got from the library.”

Gloss is also known for restoring strong female characters to the types of narratives (Western, sci-fi) from which they’re often excluded. Just like Martha succeeds on the ranch, Lily makes strides in the studio. “Lily’s pretty out there, too, [like Martha],” Gloss says. “I read quite a lot about women in Hollywood, and screenwriting—that was where women were able to break in even from the early days. In silent movie days, there were lots and lots of women who were writing, so it was one place where I could put [Lily]. It seemed natural for that to be her goal.”

Lily and Bud both realize their goals, but his comes at a higher physical cost. Gloss reveals in the novel that the gut-busting injuries sustained by stuntmen are surpassed only by the brutalities visited upon their horses. That these majestic animals were treated like props—tripped, whipped, shot and even exploded—is one stomach-churning reality that’s important to know.

Gloss tries to soften the blow through perspective.

“One of my motivations for the point of view that I use—by Bud telling the story as a remembrance from his old age—was that, in a way, I hope that puts a little bit of distance between the reader and these horrible things that happened to the horses. That was part of my intention. I do think those scenes are hard to read, but Bud is telling them from quite a distance, and he can kind of filter that through the lessons of all those years ago,” she says.

That the lessons come hard seems intentional, as if Bud needs to feel the pain of broken bones before he can address his broken heart. As Henry tells him, when he comes to collect his battered stunt-riding

son, taking him back to Oregon to heal: “ ‘Things just happen and it’s nobody’s fault.’ After another pause, he says, ‘You ranch long enough, you make peace with what you can’t help,’ ” Gloss writes. The acknowledgement that he’s been seeking peace through pain as punishment for guilt associated with Mary Claudine’s death may be just the thing he needs to let go.

Readers may be as reluctant to part with Bud as they were with Martha—but, sadly, Falling From Horses is where their story ends. “[Falling From Horses] is, in some ways, the endpoint of a cumulative meditation I’ve been having through my writing life: the way the cowboy myth has influenced American culture. This book—because it’s dealing with the movie world, which is where most of us actually get our cowboy imagery from—in some ways is the ultimate place where my meditations on those subjects took me,” Gloss says. “I’m not sure that I have anything more to say on this subject after this.”

Megan Labrise is a freelance writer and columnist based in New York.

Falling From Horses was reviewed in the Aug. 15, 2014, issue of Kirkus Reviews.

Falling From Horses Gloss, Molly Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (336 pp.) $25.00 | Oct. 28, 2014 978-0-544-27929-2 |

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BACKYARD

changed in 1943, when the Nazis sweep in and “relocate” the family to a holding camp in Terezin, and from there, the dreaded train takes them to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Men are separated from women and children, and this is the last time Karel sees his family. We experience the horrors of Auschwitz through Karel’s eyes and come to understand that some experiences are worse than death. Karel and a few others attempt escape and miraculously find themselves outside the camp. Survival instinct rules, and not everyone makes it, but Karel manages to live. Later, he resumes his life as Carl Barry in the United States, only to find the country surprisingly “forgetful” just seven years after the death of Hitler: “Seven years is not even time enough to go gray or get fat. Certainly not to forget.” Duberstein alternates between Karel’s life in Europe and Carl’s in America, taking readers to the year 2000, when for a dying Carl, past and present begin to merge in a sensitive ending. Through it all, Duberstein treats readers to Karel’s introspective, intelligent and ironic view on all that comes to pass.

He’s a memorable, complex character.

One man, two lives. Duberstein (The Twoweeks, 2012, etc.) creates a powerful story of humanity and inhumanity in this tale of war, survival and healing.

Draper, Norman Kensington (320 pp.) $15.00 paper | Nov. 25, 2014 978-1-61773-305-5 A gardening competition leads to sounds of snipping in the backyard.

Blistering and broiling in a steam room someone forgot to properly calibrate, Jasper Burdick, owner of suburban Livia’s most prestigious garden center, dreams of a landscape bursting with enormous flowers of every ilk—all purchased at Burdick’s Plant World, of course—but each bloom has a human face. Burdick’s Best Yard Contest is born. Rumors of the competition and its prize money spread throughout Livia, a town riddled with more than its fair share of plant lovers. Draper carefully arranges his cast of loopy characters, turning the town of Livia into a living garden. Dr. Phyllis Sproot plays the villain. After completing a mail-order course from the Honey Larson-Bayles School of Agronomy, the previously merely pushy Sproot blooms into a domineering, manipulative know-it-all. Utterly cowed by Sproot’s expertise, Marta Poppendauber worries that her own gardens will fall short.

Once Sproot hears about the contest, though, she abandons her vicious pruning of Marta’s gardens in favor of espionage. She sends Marta (in various ridiculous disguises) to snoop among the competitors’ plants, quickly discovering that the Fremonts are her natural enemies. Oblivious to Sproot’s villainous machinations, George and Nan Fremont have created a marvelous garden in their backyard, nearly bankrupting themselves in the process. Sproot is stunned to discover the Fremonts have defied all horticultural sanity by planting beautiful but hallucinogenic angel’s trumpets. Debut novelist Draper lavishly describes the gardens of Livia, lingering on begonias and lilacs, clematis and monarda, not to mention Sproot’s original blend of yuccas and a coreopsis-salvia-hollyhock blend. With so much detail, it’s sometimes hard to see the gardens for the plants, but the silly shenanigans keep the pace speedy.

A light tale of suburban warfare waged by the gardening elite.

THE HEART HAS ITS REASONS

Dueñas, María Translated by Kerrigan, Elie Atria (384 pp.) $26.00 | Nov. 11, 2014 978-1-4516-6833-9

A professor desperate to escape her problems stumbles into research that will change her life in this novel from Dueñas (The Time in Between, 2011).

When Blanca Perea’s husband leaves her for another woman, she wants to get away from her shattered life as soon as possible. She accepts a research grant that takes her all the way to California, as far from Madrid as she can get. Blanca doesn’t even care that her project involves nothing more than sorting through the abandoned papers of a long-dead professor. She decides to commit herself fully to organizing Andres Fontana’s legacy instead of focusing on her lackluster personal life. She eventually gets to know many of her colleagues, including an old professor, Daniel Carter, who just so happened to be a friend of Fontana’s. Through reading his papers and studying his life, Blanca starts to realize that Fontana actually lived a remarkable life...and that Carter might be more connected to him than she originally realized. Through flashbacks, the reader learns about Fontana’s formative years, as well as Carter’s time in Spain. The flashbacks contain so much information and historical background that they can be hard to follow. While they’re certainly interesting and informative, they slow down the pace of the story. However, the parallels between Blanca’s life and that of the man she’s studying are beautifully detailed.

A slow-paced but ultimately satisfying story of a woman who comes to terms with her past by investigating someone else’s. (Author tour to Austin, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, San Diego, San Francisco )

FIVE BULLETS

Duberstein, Larry Brimstone Corner Press (215 pp.) $20.00 paper | Nov. 20, 2014 978-0-692-25508-7 A character study built around an appalling historical period and a testimony to the strength of the wounded spirit’s ability to endure and live a meaningful, if not entirely happy, life.

In the summer of 1936, Karel Bondy and his wife—Czechoslovakian Jews raising three young children in Prague—are happy and free. But their idyllic life is forever 16

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MY SISTER’S GRAVE

ignores orders to abort the mission, killing the Russian crew to save Ellie’s life and triggering an international CIA manhunt for him. Why he did it, of course, is the tale. It’s a chess game of egos: CIA, MI6, FBI, Russian SVR across Norway, Greenland, Canada and Washington D.C. Antaeus, the Russian spymaster, is pulling strings on a wide net of killers and traitors. He wants revenge against Will, who planted the car bomb that killed his family and disfigured him, but his motive is pure Cold War deja vu—“to cause a major catastrophe and derail the United States.”

As Will runs, he uncovers “Operation Ferryman,” a labyrinth of moles and counterspies set by the CIA to use Russian intelligence to assassinate Cobalt, a financier who’s funded much of the world’s terrorist activities, and the final trail leads to a Russian mole within the CIA itself. Just when you think you have this maze of double-dealing figured out—surprise, it isn’t what you think.

All the elements of a classic espionage story are here.

The novel moves with relentless momentum, scattering bodies in its wake.

Dugoni, Robert Thomas & Mercer (424 pp.) $15.95 paper | $9.99 e-book | Nov. 1, 2014 978-1-4778-2557-0 978-1-4778-7556-8 e-book A Seattle homicide detective is thrust back into a painfully personal case when the remains of her 20-years-vanished younger sister are uncovered in a shallow grave near Cedar Grove, the Washington mountain town where they grew up.

Forty-two-year-old Tracy Crosswhite has long felt responsible for what happened the night her goofy, fun-loving sister, Sarah, disappeared. Former lawyer Dugoni (The Conviction, 2012, etc.) retells the events of that evening in flashback, recounting how, upon leaving a shooting championship, Tracy asked Sarah to drive her truck back to Cedar Grove during a storm so Tracy and her boyfriend could make it to their romantic dinner reservation. The next morning, the empty truck was discovered on a county road with Sarah nowhere to be found, and her disappearance turned both the Crosswhite family and the town itself upside down. As Tracy’s engagement fell apart and her parents lost themselves to grief, Tracy found herself doubting the legality of the trial that eventually put local oddball Edmund House in prison for Sarah’s apparent murder. Now, with the fresh evidence of her sister’s remains in her arsenal, Tracy seizes the opportunity to reinvestigate Sarah’s fate—and the possible conspiracy she believes led a man to get convicted for a crime he didn’t commit. The majority of the book centers on Tracy’s quest to uncover the truth and secure a new trial for House.

Though the book is well-written and its classic premise is sure to absorb legal-thriller fans, it grows a bit plodding at times, with too many pages dedicated to House’s retrial.

Though the pace lags at times, the characters are richly detailed and true to life, and the ending is sure to please fans. (Agent: Meg Ruley)

DARK SPIES

Dunn, Matthew Morrow/HarperCollins (384 pp.) $26.99 | Oct. 7, 2014 978-0-06-230946-4 The Russians are the bad guys once again in this spy-vs.-spy thriller.

Dunn comes with a pedigree of three previous Spycatcher novels (Slingshot, 2013, etc.) and a career in the British intelligence service MI6, and this new book exploits both experiences. Will Cochrane, perhaps the most caring, sensitive spy ever written, is on sniper duty in Norway, loathing this particular assignment as beneath his training and capabilities. But as things go wrong and Ellie Hallowes, the spook he’s covering, is attacked by a gang of Russian thugs, he |

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“A road-trip novel that will make readers want to hop into the car alongside Clem and keep driving....” from driftwood

DRIFTWOOD

annoyingly passive Caridad have various adventures while the author treats us to large doses of historical background poorly incorporated into his eventful fiction. The translator can perhaps be blamed for such anachronistic dialogue as, “No way!” and “Yeah, yeah,” but not for the whipsawing from one storyline to another that prevents readers from connecting with any of the characters until far too late. Only Falcones’ vivid portrait of gypsy culture—a proud, amoral and unabashedly sensual challenge to puritanical Spanish Catholicism—maintains interest as the plot twists on and on. The narrative does eventually arrive at a climactic confrontation and a moving affirmation of gypsy solidarity and tenacity, but it’s an awfully long slog to get there.

Very slow to gain momentum, but colorful background and a slam-bang finale almost make up for it.

Dutton, Elizabeth Skyhorse Publishing (256 pp.) $24.95 | Nov. 4, 2014 978-1-62914-499-3 Rich girl Clem Jasper is drifting through life with no plan or purpose until her rock-singer father dies, leaving her a mysterious pack of letters that will take her on a road trip through California and a journey into his past.

Facing strong opposition from her mother, who fears digging up the past will unearth dark secrets, Clem follows her late father’s instructions, determined to make good on his last gift to her. Along the way, she grieves, ruminates on the nature of family and realizes some startling truths. While she doesn’t find any easy answers and uncovers more than she wants to know about her father’s past, she discovers that sometimes in order to find yourself you have to get lost in mind, body and spirit.

Dutton (1,033 Reasons to Smile, 2011) tells an old tale but doctors it with fresh surprises that keep the reader turning the pages.

Clem’s epiphanies are often clichéd, but her voice springs off the page as if she’s speaking aloud. A little short on originality but so full of heart and humor that you keep reading anyway.

A road-trip novel that will make readers want to hop into the car alongside Clem and keep driving, even if they’ve already seen all the sights and sounds before and know exactly how the journey ends.

LAST TRAIN TO BABYLON

Fam, Charlee Morrow/HarperCollins (352 pp.) $14.99 paper | Oct. 28, 2014 978-0-06-232807-6

In Fam’s debut novel, a recent college graduate “content creator” returns home to Long Island for the funeral of her former best friend and is forced to confront her deeply painful past.

Aubrey wakes up in a psychiatric care facility, bruised and severely hung over, after taking a drunken walk along an elevated train line after the funeral of her high school best friend, Rachel. Aubrey harbors a seething anger toward Rachel and her guidance-counselor mother, Karen, but the reasons are camouflaged by a 20-something cynicism and the despairing consumption of booze. As the narrative progresses, we move between present-day Aubrey and the experimental, bored high school version and meet her then-boyfriend, Adam. Gradually, we learn that Aubrey’s transit through young adulthood involved some deeply traumatic experiences which were compounded in part by her inability to trust her best friend. For years, she’s walled off her feelings, becoming increasingly emotionally detached. Aubrey’s future happiness depends on her ability not only to recognize what happened, but to be able to tell others without fear of reprisal. The first-person narration has a guarded, angry tone: “Who put the word ‘fun’ in funeral? If you really think about it, funeral sounds like it should be synonymous with ‘carnival’ or ‘funnel cake.’ But I can’t think of anything fun about Rachel’s funeral, except for the fact that she won’t be there.” The book’s strident pacing, combined with its unsparing portrayal of teenage cruelty and thoughtlessness, makes Aubrey’s eventual confrontation with her past a welcome relief. However, despite Aubrey’s warped perspective, Fam manages to carve out enough space for the supporting characters to believably exist within the maelstrom of Aubrey’s raw emotions.

By sardonically inhabiting the solipsistic, emotionally fraught reality of adolescence, Fam creates a startling coming-of-age story that is neither sentimental nor clichéd.

THE BAREFOOT QUEEN

Falcones, Ildefonso Translated by Lethem, Mara Faye Crown (640 pp.) $28.00 | Nov. 25, 2014 978-0-8041-3948-9

Another historical epic from bestselling Falcones (The Hand of Fatima, 2011, etc.), this one set among Spain’s fiery gypsies.

The busy tale begins with the arrival in Cadiz of Caridad, an African slave from Cuba liberated but stranded by the shipboard death of her master. She’s rescued after weeks of abuse at the hands of various brutal white men

by Melchor, patriarch of the Vega clan of gypsies. Most of the action involves this odd couple, plus Melchor’s daughter, Ana, and granddaughter, Milagros. They are separated by the mass roundup of gypsies in 1749: Ana, like thousands of others, is jailed and endures years of torment; from prison, she disowns Milagros for marrying Pedro Garcia, whose family has an ancient blood feud with the Vegas. There’s no question about who’s in the right, as Pedro proves to be a rotten husband who, when Milagros’ talents as a dancer and singer take them to Madrid, starts by cheating on her and ends by pimping her out by force to aristocrats, then branding her a whore. Meanwhile, feisty Melchor and 18

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“An unassuming triumph of straightforward, topical storytelling that both adds to and augments a body of work worthy of a Nobel Prize.” from hiding in plain sight

HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT

INSTANT WINNER

Fountain, Carrie Penguin (96 pp.) $20.00 | Sep. 30, 2014 978-0-14-312663-8

Farah, Nuruddin Riverhead (320 pp.) $27.95 | Oct. 30, 2014 978-1-59463-336-2

Poems that commemorate, if not exactly celebrate, the state of motherhood.

There’s a time for having “a guy spread my legs / on a pool table,” and then there’s a time for making oatmeal. That’s not exactly how the poet of Ecclesiastes put it, but it’s close enough to enfold this collection, the second from Texas-based writer Fountain. Writing in unadorned language in a kind of flat, featureless tone, she evokes the weariness attendant in bringing a baby into being and then tending it in safety in what is, after all, a precarious existence. “All I want to do is go home / and take off these pants / and make Tuscan bean soup,” she writes, breaking from her favored couplets in an onrush of exasperation. The feel is often bittersweet, almost

A domestic drama is a prism illuminating the often conflicting cultural and social temperaments of contemporary Africa.

Set primarily in Nairobi, this 12th novel by Somali-born Farah (Crossbones, 2011, etc.) sifts through the personal and emotional fallout of a terrorist attack in Mogadishu that kills a U.N. official who emigrated from his native Somalia decades before. His griefstricken sister Bella, a model-turned–professional photographer, decides to leave behind her own expatriate life in Europe and resettle in Kenya, where she will honor her brother’s wishes by caring for his teenage son, Salif, and daughter, Dahaba. Saying the least, this arrangement does not please their brash, self-centered mother, Valerie, who arrives in Nairobi with her lesbian lover, Padmini, to stake her claim upon the children, who prefer their more worldly and levelheaded aunt as a legal guardian. With delicacy and compassion, Farah, whose own sister was killed earlier this year in a terrorist bombing while working for UNICEF, fashions a domestic chamber piece where motives, yearnings and regrets intersect among these complex, volatile personalities against a wider backdrop of religious and cultural conflict, social and political upheaval, and even “family values” in post-millennial Africa. Even the most offhand conversations Bella and the other major characters have with Nairobi citizens of varied ages and genders throw unexpected and necessary light upon aspects of a society that the rest of the world knows, or cares, relatively little about. (It’s a solid bet that most readers outside Africa aren’t aware of Kenyans’ bigotry toward the Somalis choosing to live in their country.) Throughout this novel’s big and small incidents, Farah maintains a narrative composure that shuns typecasting, reserves judgment and keeps his readers alert to whatever hidden graces emerge from even the most difficult characters.

An unassuming triumph of straightforward, topical storytelling that both adds to and augments a body of work worthy of a Nobel Prize.

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THE O. HENRY PRIZE STORIES 2014

elegiac, as Fountain writes of such mundane events as flying with a baby, distracting her from the clamor with “a hundred Cheerios, one by one,” and wishing that the sensory apparatus be turned off so as not to remind her of the monotony (“brainwashing / sounds great / like the feeling // you get when you stand up / too quickly”). Fountain’s language is formal but not grand, so when she steps into less-controlled diction (“Why do these / ducks make my soul go nuts”), it’s noticeable. In the end, one feels that a major victory has been accomplished when a poem is finished without too much interruption and “the baby sleeps and sleeps.”

Suited to an audience of like-minded, weary-to-thebone readers who will find much to sympathize with in these pages.

Furman, Laura—Ed. Anchor (480 pp.) $15.95 paper | Sep. 9, 2014 978-0-345-80731-1

Another winning installment of the nearly century-old prize volume.

One day some enterprising scholar will take the O. Henry Prize anthologies and use them as the basis for a synoptic study of changes in the themes and styles of the American short story. Until that day, a few gross generalizations emerge: The day of minimalism has passed, although a few writers remain under Raymond Carver’s sway; conversations in short stories are seldom as direct as they are in plays, and most of the time people wind up talking past each other; and if short stories are vignettes, manageable slices of life, then life can be awfully damned dreary: “Carl is helping her peel potatoes with another cigarette in the corner of his mouth. Dylan drinks from a can of Guinness.” In short stories, people often behave as they’re stereotypically supposed to—Irish people drink, working-class people argue, rich people stare vacantly—but just as often don’t, and subverting expectations is the hallmark of the best of these pieces. Among the standouts are Olivia Clare’s uncannily timely “Petur,” set in an ash-covered valley with 86 permanent Icelandic residents and a clutch of existentially uncertain Americans (“She felt nineteen, mostly. She looked fifty”); David Bradley’s neatly compact portrait of family memory as it plays out in the jumbled hills of Pennsylvania, on “rough, recondite roads—Pinchots, he called them—that snaked through gloomed forests before bursting into sunlit coves”; and William Trevor’s terse study “The Women,” with its densely packed opening: “Growing up in the listless 1980s, Cecilia Normanton knew her father well, her mother not at all.” The volume’s best story among a field of strong contenders, though, may be Louise Erdrich’s “Nero,” a fine contribution to the nearly forgotten tragic-dogstory genre.

A must-have collection for writers and readers alike: for readers because of the high-quality prose, and for writers because of the trade secrets tucked away in the commentaries.

FAVORITE SON

Freshwater, Will Dreamspinner Press (204 pp.) $14.99 paper | $6.99 e-book Jun. 22, 2014 978-1-62798-772-1 978-1-62798-773-8 e-book In Freshwater’s debut, John Peter Wells learns having it all isn’t enough.

John is chief counsel to Sen. Patrick Donovan, a Washington power player. But there’s double trouble in paradise: His partner, David, restless because of John’s laserlike focus on work, prowls the capital’s gay haunts; and Donovan, who wants the presidential nomination, hires an adviser who convinces him John’s homosexuality is a liability. Meanwhile, Donovan’s daughter, Melody, John’ research assistant, is pining for him in unrequited love. Herein a narrative hole: Surely a modern young woman would understand that sexual preferences are immutable, but a depressed Melody commits suicide in Boston on the night her father announces his presidential campaign and pushes John out of his job. John collapses and winds up taking the ferry to Provincetown. What follows is part fish-outof-water story, part protagonist-finds-himself story as John tries understand Melody’s admonition to him the first time he met her: “Just be careful not to lose yourself along the way.” Provincetown hosts eclectic characters—flamboyant bookstore owner Byron; elderly widow Florence, mourning her son’s death from AIDS; and Lynn, an empathetic psychologist. Each is distinct, and drawn with familiarity, but archetypical. John tells people his name is Peter, a dual identity the author handles deftly, and stumbles toward romance with Danny, a carpenter/hunk restoring an old church. Danny’s the confused scion—“I’m not gay!”—of a prosperous family floundering after the deaths of his parents and younger brother in a plane crash. While there’s more than one instance of brief point-of-view changes causing a hiccup in the narrative flow, Freshwater’s familiarity with the political posturing of D.C. and the gay-tourist-town–meets–high-power-hideaway that’s Provincetown gives the story a solid sense of place.

Freshwater’s first foray will appeal to readers looking for romance rather than a literary exploration of sexuality.

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THE HILLTOP

Gavron, Assaf Scribner (464 pp.) $26.00 | Oct. 28, 2014 978-1-4767-6043-8 Writing with crisp insight and dry humor, Israeli author Gavron (Almost Dead, 2010, etc.) tells a lively tale of life in an embattled Jewish settlement on an arid, rocky West Bank hilltop in this award-winning novel. |

Gavron’s sardonic yet sage story, which earned Israel’s prestigious Bernstein Prize, focuses on an ever expanding community of observant Jews that populates the West Bank settlement Ma’aleh Hermesh C. Bit by bit—a new mobile home here, a spare room fashioned from a shipping container there, a new playground for the kids (funded by a deep-pocketed Miami macher), maybe some improvements for the synagogue or day care center (Jewish workmen only, please)—these settlers, who consider themselves modern-day pioneers, gradually establish ever more permanent footing as the government either looks the other way, threatens to evacuate, or (despite the fact that the settlement may not officially exist) boosts their infrastructure and provides protection, depending on the moods and whims of those in power on any given day. Through it all, Ma’aleh Hermesh C’s motley assortment of residents contends with the stuff of life—babies are born, marriages break up, business ideas bloom and die, teenagers come of age and struggle to grasp where they stand. Within the vast cast of characters, two brothers, Roni and Gabi Kupper, orphaned as infants, raised on a kibbutz, are central. Gabi, the younger, has found his life derailed by uncontrollable rages—the result of “a short-circuit in the brain,”

perhaps. Newly religious, and fervently so, he has come to the hilltop to seek sanctuary, absolution and maybe even, eventually, a sense of belonging. But what, precisely, is his elder brother, Roni, a secular Jew who worked as a high-stakes trader at a Wall Street hedge fund, seeking? Gavron lets Gabi’s and Roni’s stories unfold gradually, and in the midst of this wise and waggish tale, we may find ourselves feeling unexpectedly invested in these disparate brothers’ fates.

Slowly and incrementally, like those settlers on that craggy West Bank hilltop, Gavron’s story gains a foothold in our hearts and minds and stubbornly refuses to leave.

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THE GIFT OF DARKNESS

a Jewish doctor, Yael Cohen, who makes two significant discoveries. First, she finds that Bilal is clutching a mysterious ancient amulet that dates back to biblical Israel, and then she realizes that she and the failed suicide bomber share a genealogical connection. Alongside the developing mysteries in contemporary Israel, the novel intermittently returns to a series of historical vignettes that take place during the time of King Solomon, the return from Babylonian exile in the sixth century B.C., the reign of King Herod the Great in the first century B.C., the Jewish revolt against the Romans in A.D. 70, and the time before the bar Kokhba Revolt in the early A.D. second century. The connection among all these storylines is dubious; however, the drama in the present day is heightened by the involvement of an ultraconservative Messianic Jewish group, Neturei Karta, which maintains hidden political connections while working toward their goal of the destruction of Israel. Into this tension steps Yaniv Grossman, a handsome American journalist whose investigation of the Orthodox Jewish right wing takes him deep into political intrigue and deeper into the heart of Dr. Cohen.

A significant amount of the story will need to be wrapped up in the rest of the trilogy, but this novel is wellresearched and enjoyable to read.

Giambanco, Valentina Quercus (400 pp.) $26.99 | Nov. 4, 2014 978-1-62365-848-9

Giambanco’s first novel features a Seattle homicide detective who relies on her instincts to thwart a ruthless killer before he can strike again.

Detective Alice Madison and her partner, DS Kevin Brown, are on the trail of a killer who trussed up and murdered a family that included two small children. To add to the complicated case, the murders seem connected to an infamous cold case in which three boys were kidnapped and one was killed.

New to the homicide division and plagued by dreams of her past, Madison knows she has to carry her own weight to win approval from the division’s other detectives, and the case seems fairly easy to crack since they believe they already know who committed the brutal murders early in the game.

But figuring out who sent a card to attorney Nathan Quinn with the words “Thirteen Days” and carved the same thing at the crime scene proves much more challenging than Madison anticipated. Working her way through an assortment of dead ends and fighting a leak that lands the intimate details of the case in the newspaper, she decides to ignore procedure and go with her gut. Problem is, the suspected killer’s watching her, and he’s both deadly and unpredictable. It’s obvious that Giambanco conducted impressive research into police procedure before writing this book, but she overshares what she’s learned. Instead of having an air of authenticity, the novel often reads like a textbook. It’s also too long by at least a third, made unwieldy by stilted dialogue, superfluous detail, random tense changes and a forest of not-very-compelling characters only peripherally connected to the story.

A forgettable effort that could have been better with tighter writing and ruthless editing.

BELL OF THE DESERT

Gold, Alan Yucca/Skyhorse (464 pp.) $24.95 | Nov. 4, 2014 978-1-63158-007-9

Gold (Bloodline, 2014, etc.) crafts highly detailed historical fiction from the unparalleled life of Gertrude Bell, English debutante-turned-explorer–turned World War I diplomatic intelligence officer.

Before there was Lawrence of Arabia, there was Bell, “Daughter of the Desert,” a woman of protean intelligence, political acumen and undying passion for Arabia who became a seminal figure in Arab nationalism. After her formal “coming out,” Bell found prospective suitors less than her intellectual equals. Then she met Hashemite sheik Abd alRahman as he consulted her uncle, a British ambassador, and began to passionately explore Arabia and its culture. She often journeyed alone, a shocking decision then. Gold has Bell meet young T.E. Lawrence at an archaeological dig at Carchemish.

They develop a platonic love that carries on through WWI, as the fey young scholar becomes Lawrence of Arabia. Postwar, there are political machinations, “a seething mass of distortions, contradictions, lies, evasions, prejudices, denials, and demands,” as Britain and France remain blind to colonialism’s impending collapse. Bell and Lawrence, albeit enamored of Arabia, were burdened by their own prejudices, perceiving Arabs as a “medieval and patronizing bunch of chauvinistic jingoists.” While Gold’s fact-packed narrative recounts the transition of desert fiefdoms into unstable oil-rich states wracked by tribal tensions, his character sketches are what shines—including Churchill, “a likeable, devious and somewhat untrustworthy politician,” and

BLOODLINE

Gold, Alan; Jones, Mike Atria (432 pp.) $16.00 paper | Oct. 28, 2014 978-1-4767-5984-5 Series: Heritage Trilogy A Palestinian suicide bomber fails at his mission and meets a Jewish surgeon with whom he shares a mysterious connection.

Gold (The Bell of the Desert, 2014, etc.) and Jones team up to deliver this first book in the Heritage Trilogy. The main part of the story takes place in Israel in 2007, when a young Palestinian man, Bilal, attempts to blow himself up in an effort to destroy the Western Wall, a Jewish holy site. His failure lands Bilal in the hospital under the care of 22

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RUN

the brilliant Faisal, third son of the Hashemite ruler of Mecca and Medina, installed as king of the Bell-created nation of Iraq.

Beyond the political scheming, there’s romance, literary appreciation for outsized desert vistas, acknowledgment of Arabia’s intellectual contributions, illustrations of gender oppression, and a precis on the complex elements relating to Zionism and Palestine. Gold offers an interesting, imaginative chronicle of an extraordinary woman present at the creation of post-colonial Arab-Western tensions.

A dense, highly detailed fictional yin to the yang of Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom.

Grant, Andrew Ballantine (288 pp.) $26.00 | Oct. 7, 2014 978-0-345-54072-0 A fast-moving thriller with a plot no thicker than a thumb drive.

Marc Bowman arrives early for work at AmeriTel and is summoned by CEO Roger LeBrock. “We’ve been extremely happy with the work you’ve done for us” as a contractor, LeBrock says, but you’re fired. Puzzled and peeved, Bowman steals a memory stick containing data on his project, information that’s worth millions. Later he tells his wife, Carolyn, a regular AmeriTel employee. They bicker, which seems like their main mode of dialogue, and she walks out on him. The company knows he took the memory stick, and they want it back. Boy, do they ever. But why? It can’t be the data itself, as it’s duplicate information and there must be a

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A compelling story of one woman’s attempt to find herself, build her business and solve a mystery.

nondisclosure agreement. A virus, perhaps? Bowman won’t give up the stick as people try to persuade him and even try to kill him for it. He has no idea whom to trust, even questioning Carolyn’s loyalty. Homeland Security wants to arrest him. Friends might be enemies. Allies might be foes. Luckily, mild-mannered and mildly annoying Bowman knows how to defend himself, and various people become corpses. (The story is told in the first person, so it’s no spoiler to say that he doesn’t become one of those corpses.) “I was sick of people attacking me,” he whines. Well, of course. “...Stealing my work.” No, it’s the company’s work. A theme pervading the book seems to be that you can trust no one, not even your spouse. Keep looking over your shoulder, because someone is about to stab you in the back. If the reader accepts the rather thin premise that evil people are going to swarm over a newly unemployed contract programmer for implausible reasons then the story turns out to be a lot of fun. Twists and surprises abound, the pace never slows, and the writing satisfies.

So go ahead, read and enjoy this one. Like a cone of cotton candy, it’s fast, fun and forgettable.

PROOF OF ANGELS

Hackett, Mary Curran Morrow/HarperCollins (320 pp.) $14.99 paper | $7.99 e-book Nov. 4, 2014 978-0-06-227995-8 978-0-06-227996-5 e-book An angel saves a firefighter from a burning building, but his spiritual recovery requires some mortal intervention.

Hackett’s sophomore novel gives Sean Magee from Proof of Heaven (2011) his own story. Having fled Massachusetts in the wake of his nephew’s death and his sister’s marriage, Sean has constructed a new life for himself in LA, of course, the City of Angels. A firefighter on long shifts, he numbs his grief by risking his life each day and avoids calling home. But his luck runs out when a sudden eruption of flames traps him in a house, unable to find an exit. About to give up hope, he prays. He promises God that he’ll right a wrong, a wrong that has something to do with a certain Ciara in Italy. And with that prayer, an angel directs Sean to the only escape route and a fall that leaves him burned and broken but mercifully not paralyzed.

In addition to his physical injuries, Sean panics that his hardwon sobriety may be at stake. But in short order, a flight of reallife angels gathers to see him through recovery, including fellow firefighter James, a food addict. Brother-in-law Gaspar arrives to set up home-based care with nurse-and-physical-therapist Tom, an exercise fanatic and veteran recovering from his own wounds. Service-dog trainer Libby, a recovering heroin addict, rounds out the team with Chief, the instantly smitten yellow Labrador. Driven to repair his body as soon as possible, Sean relies on his friends, little realizing how much they will depend upon him, as well. Hackett employs the angel metaphor to mind-numbing effect: Everyone who helps another becomes an angel; everyone who doubts the existence of angels is proven wrong; everyone who needs an angel in turn becomes an angel to help someone else.

A warm but heavy-handed tale of love and faith.

BLEEDING HEART

Gyllenhaal, Liza NAL Accent/Berkley (352 pp.) $15.00 paper | Nov. 4, 2014 978-0-451-46670-9 A landscaper thinks she’s designing the garden of her dreams...until money troubles and a possible murder pull her into a nightmare.

Alice Hyatt is trying to move on with her life after her husband’s disappearance; he took millions of dollars and a female accomplice with him. She finds solace and stability in her landscaping business, Green Acres. When nearby millionaire Graham Mackenzie asks her to design his garden, she can’t say no— not just because he promises to give a generous donation to her best friend’s charity, but because she wants to take on the challenge of creating the most beautiful garden in the Berkshires. Mackenzie doesn’t exactly have a spotless reputation, however—he earned his money in the hydraulic fracturing industry, and many residents aren’t happy about it. Alice’s controversial client soon causes her problems with many locals, including Tom Deaver, the environmental writer on whom she develops a crush. But Mackenzie doesn’t really cause trouble until he drops dead—without paying Alice the hefty check she earned by creating his garden. When the police reveal that Mackenzie died under suspicious circumstances, Alice realizes that she’s a suspect. It turns out most people in town had a motive to kill Mackenzie, and Alice takes it upon herself to get to the bottom of the mystery.

“Gardening thriller” may seem an unlikely genre, but Gyllenhaal (A Place for Us, 2013, etc.) pulls it off. The novel deftly balances comforting descriptions of gardens and small-town life with the suspenseful unraveling of a mystery.

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MONASTERY

meaningless,” this descendent of Polish and Lebanese grandparents is inspired by his travels and moved by his far-flung encounters with people who radiate belief. They include a Harlem woman who hosts private jazz concerts in her apartment “as a way of surviving Sundays,” having lost her son; self-sufficient coffee growers in Guatemala who believe the quality of their beans reflects their own inner values; and, in her own way, a flight attendant he runs into in Israel with whom he had an oddly erotic encounter in the past. One of this author’s special attributes is never forcing meaning on his experiences, letting us judge the mundane factor of certain moments. But he’s also great at reversing our initial impressions of people and places. A stone-faced border guard who denies the narrator passage into Belize shows different colors in a barroom. In the end, Halfon says, “Everyone decides how to save themselves.” We can only be happy he decided to become a writer.

A rising star among Latin writers, Halfon is a lively traveling companion, even at his most pessimistic.

Halfon, Eduardo Bellevue Literary Press (160 pp.) $14.95 paper | $10.99 e-book Oct. 14, 2014 978-1-934137-82-6 978-1-934137-83-3 e-book With this sly, quietly penetrating account of life on the road—a quasifictional journey containing sharp reflections on his Jewish ancestry—gifted young Guatemalan writer Halfon picks up where he left off with his acclaimed The Polish Boxer (2012).

The narrator declares himself a “retired” Jew who “can’t imagine a prayer, any prayer, having a meaning more profound than a mother’s good-night kiss.” During a visit to Jerusalem to attend his rigidly observant sister’s wedding, he feels nothing when he touches the Western Wall. But for all his coldness toward religion, and his claim that “every journey is

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THE TRAIN TO PARIS

Burning House” is representative of the prose style at work: “I am no longer sure of memory, of the flashes I see and also of the gaps where I know things are missing; if what I recall is recalled for any reason beyond the telling,” Harmon writes.

Some, like the title story and its follow-up, “Hattie Dalton,” are sketches lasting only a few pages. Others, like “The Lighthouse Keeper”—a story told in abstract definitions of places and characters in a small town—or “Dear Oklahoma,” an ode to home, are linguistically experimental but not all that interesting. That said, the collection has a breakout story or two, such as the lengthy confession of a fisherman living in exile, “The Fisherman and His Wife.” The book also improves when Harmon takes a more straightforward approach. This is especially true in the collection’s showpiece, “The Passion of Asa Fitch,” a spectacular portrait of a cantankerous old SOB burdened with the remainder of his wits and a flirtatious spirit that refuses to go gracefully into the night.

A mixed bag of experimental writing and rural fables mostly aimed at readers who frequent the high-end literary journals on a regular basis.

Hampson, Sebastian Text (304 pp.) $15.95 paper | Nov. 4, 2014 978-1-922147-79-0

Two unlikable lost souls have brief encounters in France in this debut novel.

Twenty-year-old Lawrence, stranded in a European nowheresville after a tepid vacation with his girlfriend in Madrid, finds himself taken under the wing of a well-dressed, decisive woman named Elodie. Lawrence is an art history student from New Zealand set to study at the Sorbonne, Elodie is a mystery—a brasher, older Holly Golightly. Both are trying to get back to Paris, but the rail system has mostly shut down, so Elodie hails a cab and takes them to Biarritz. There, with her husband’s credit card, she pays for a new set of clothes for Lawrence, a suite at the Palais, champagne and caviar. She and Lawrence snark at each other through dinner, she ignores him to flirt with an unappealing old friend, she throws herself into the hotel pool, forcing Lawrence to come to her rescue, and, inevitably, beds him. Lawrence’s feelings about Elodie don’t seem to change from the first: He disdains and is obsessed with her. When she calls him after many months and invites him to meet her in Paris, he fantasizes about standing her up in a way that borders on creepy. He goes to see her anyway, of course, and their second day together goes much like the first. There is a hint that they are softening toward each other, but to what end?

Any change in either character—or their circumstances—is negligible. Though clearly trying to ape Paris’ famous misogynist heroes, Hampson offers none of the marrow-sucking vigor of Hemingway or the dizzying self-destructiveness of Miller. He also lacks the ability of his more successful navelgazing contemporaries to add compelling emotional texture to youthful ennui.

A juvenile novel mired in old tropes.

THE FINAL RECOLLECTIONS OF CHARLES DICKENS

Hauser, Thomas Counterpoint (160 pp.) $23.00 | Nov. 11, 2014 978-1-61902-428-1

A risky pastiche presents itself as the memoir of 59-year-old British novelist Charles Dickens, confessing the “most important chapter of my life”—his secret, undying love for the wife of a vicious scoundrel.

It takes a bold writer to mimic the voices of geniuses, but Hauser (Waiting for Carver Boyd, 2011, etc.), author of some 47 works of fiction and nonfiction, has gone down this road before and breezily “comingles” his words with those of a much-loved true-life author once again. Cantering through the facts of Dickens’ life (born 1812; father imprisoned for debt; miserable episode in a blacking factory; prodigious invention; eventual fame and fortune; marital breakdown), Hauser pauses to insert a lurid episode of prostitution, mutilation, fraud and murder revolving around the villainous character of Geoffrey Wingate. An established, unmarried journalist on the threshold of success, the young Dickens is invited to write a sketch of Wingate. Research leads him to the impoverished victims of Wingate’s rapacious and brutal actions, but it’s Wingate himself who introduces Amanda, his beautiful, unpredictable wife, whose harsh upbringing chimes with Dickens’ strong views on social reform. Bringing in a police inspector to help investigate Wingate’s crimes, Dickens—still a virgin—finds himself falling under Amanda’s spell, all the more so when she appears at his home one night with a bottle of wine and surprising undergarments. Hauser’s attempt at a Dickensian voice falls short on brio, warmth and invention. Instead, he

HISTORY OF COLD SEASONS

Harmon, Joshua Dzanc (224 pp.) $14.95 paper | Nov. 11, 2014 978-1-936873-43-2

A dozen stories that mash up poetic, dreamlike observations with the caustic, inbred hardiness of New Englanders.

Harmon (Quinnehtukqut, 2007, etc.) writes stories that feel rooted in his poetry background, and many read more like dream diaries than traditional narratives. For the most part, they focus on the perils of youth and the indignities of old age. In the opener, “Rope,” two sisters imagine that their brother has run away to the woods, where he keeps a girl tied to a tree with a rope he stole from a neighbor. “The 26

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“If you suffer from a condition that makes you think you’re dead, robbing you of all human feeling, does that make you a better killer for hire?” from spark

REAL SANTA

offers a simple, sketchy tale starring Dickens as a sad workaholic whose late re-encounter with Amanda in New York only serves to send him to his grave with a shattered heart.

Inauthentic and skimpy. Dickens fans should stick to the unparalleled originals.

Hazelgrove, William Koehler Books (244 pp.) $26.95 | $7.99 e-book | Oct. 1, 2014 978-1-940192-96-3 978-1-940192-59-8 e-book

SPARK

In a fit of inspired insanity, a laid-off suburban father decides to prove to his 9-year-old daughter that there really is a Santa Claus.

Never doubt the determination of a mad scientist and his plans. In this sixth novel from prolific writer and blogger Hazelgrove (The Pitcher, 2013, etc.), the author marries the everyday dramas found in the novels of Tom Perrotta and Nick Hornby to the high camp of Carl Hiaasen or Dave Barry. His protagonist is an aging engineer named George Krononfeldt who is promptly laid off from his firm for his increasingly cranky attitude. Simultaneously, his daughter Megan is slowly being poisoned of her belief in Christmas-y myths by her hateful teacher, Mrs. Worthington. “I will kick Santa squarely in the nuts once and for all,” she proclaims during one of her darker moments. Undetermined, George starts sketching out plans to give his daughter—who has inherited her father’s penchant for requiring empirical data to prove a coherent thesis—one more Christmas miracle. “I’m going to be the Real Santa,” George tells his father, whom he enlists in aid of the outlandish project. “I’m going to land a sled on the roof, go up the chimney, go down it, deliver the gifts, and then I’m going to get back in the sled and take off into the sky.” After spending more than $80,000 building a contraption that would rival a NASA launch and engaging the help of his estranged older son and daughter and a slightly mad Santa impersonator named “Kris Kringgle,” George does indeed take to the skies. It’s not as frenetic as Christopher Moore’s The Stupidest Angel or as maudlin as all those holiday staples (read: A Christmas Story); adults looking for a funny holidaythemed tale that doesn’t lose its sense of wonder in the face of realism will find a treat here.

A lovingly crafted comedy about the madness that fatherhood inspires.

Hawks, John Twelve Doubleday (336 pp.) $25.95 | Oct. 7, 2014 978-0-385-53867-1 If you suffer from a condition that makes you think you’re dead, robbing you of all human feeling, does that make you a better killer for hire? Hawks’ latest dystopian adventure explores the possibilities.

Since he suffered brain damage as the result of a motorcycle accident, New York facial recognition researcher Jacob Underwood has had Cotard’s syndrome, a rare, actual affliction that creates a “living dead” state. Only by imagining his life force as a spark inside the shell of his physical being is he able to handle his “Transformation” and live in a corrupt world—a world in which nubots have replaced huge numbers of young Americans and Europeans in the workplace, leading to the violent mass demonstrations of the Day of Rage. He hates to be touched and subsists solely on a protein drink.

Hired by a superpowerful New York conglomerate to eliminate embezzlers and snitches—he does need money to get by—he proves a brilliant and resourceful operative. But as coldly efficient as he is at shooting grown men and women, something tugs at his buried conscience when he’s ordered to kill a whole family. The novel, told through his point of view, charts a significant change in his condition as he pursues a plucky young woman he oddly finds he’s growing to like. The fascination, however, lies less in the plot than in the intricacies of Underwood’s coping system, which the character explains through charts, diagrams and lists. What constitutes life? Doctors keep telling him he’s still among the living, even if he lacks the emotion that makes people feel alive. Is he more alive than the nubots?

With its fascinating protagonist, Hawks’ first book since his Forth Realm trilogy sets itself apart from other futuristic thrillers.

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HOUSE OF WONDER

THE PUSHCART PRIZE XXXIX Best Of The Small Presses 2015 Edition

Healy, Sarah New American Library (352 pp.) $15.00 paper | Sep. 2, 2014 978-0-451-23987-7

Henderson, Bill; Pushcart Prize editors—Eds. Pushcart (650 pp.) $35.00 | $19.95 paper | Nov. 3, 2014 978-1-888889-72-7 978-1-888889-73-4 paper

In Healy’s second novel (Can I Get An Amen?, 2012), divorced single mother Jenna returns home to New Jersey to help her aging mother, Silla, cope with accusations that Jenna’s autistic brother, Warren, is responsible for a string of burglaries in the neighborhood.

The word “wonder” is defined as “rapt attention or astonishment at something awesomely mysterious,” which is a concise way of describing how Jenna, single mother to daughter Rose, has always conceived of her undiagnosed, but likely autistic, twin brother, Warren. For 36 years, Warren has barely held down a series of entry-level jobs when he’s not in his room in his hoarder mother’s home making model airplanes.

A recent spate of petty thefts has made the formerly tolerant neighbors suspicious of Warren and openly hostile to his mother. Jenna, who’s running a graphic design business and trying not to think about her charming absentee ex, Duncan, finds herself drawn into the familial dynamics she once sought to escape. However, as she delves into her mother’s secret past, Jenna begins to find the seeds of a new life potentially blooming with a former high school crush. But can Warren be trusted, or will he need to be institutionalized? Creating a rich family mythology, including earlobe pulling in times of distress to summon a family member and fabricated monsters named “Maglons,” Healy also occasionally writes in gorgeous metaphor: “I had stood on the front steps of our apartment as [Duncan] got in a cab for the airport, wishing that I could cross and cross and cross my arms over my chest, wishing that I had rows and layers of arms, like the horseshoe crabs my father used to pull out of the water at the beach.” The familyspecific language and nuanced emotional turns make the novel feel instantly familiar without being predictable.

Shifting admirably between the hidden past and the uncomfortably exposed present, Healy creates a believable and poignant portrait of a unique family grappling to understand itself and its role in a largely unimaginative world.

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An old warhorse takes another turn of the track, just shy of its 40th.

The good news in this edition of the venerable Pushcart annual anthology is that there are fewer of the usual suspects, the Carver acolytes and David Foster Wallace wannabes. The bad news is that many of the newcomers are not yet skilled.

There’s a certain unevenness, then, to what is already a mixed bag. Some of the poetry seems intended not for the page but the open-mike slam (“The rape joke is that you had been drinking wine coolers. Wine coolers! Who drinks wine coolers? People who get raped, according to the rape joke”), while some of the prose seems not quite finished. Much work of whatever genre thrills in the droppage of the f-bomb (“What’s going on here, Pete? What the fuck? / What the fuck yourself.”; “Gonna need financing. Forget the fucking Caddy. Go higher.”). Ah, the thrill of discovering that you can swear in college (“They were someone’s sweethearts shitting on the sidewalk in the sun”); ah, the thrill of peppering a piece with rhetorical questions and passing as wise (“Is there a core or essence, there from the beginning? Or is what’s left more like fragments?”). Still, there are some fine contributions here, among them Shawn Vestal’s takedown of missionary piety (“Really, guys, that book is no more an ancient record than I am the Duke of Scotland”) and, far and away the best piece in the book, Rebecca Solnit’s rousing defense in “Mysteries of Thoreau, Unsolved” of Henry David Thoreau’s laundering habits, which brilliantly threads in notes on the deadening obnoxiousness of social media (“Having grown up with parents who believed deeply in the importance of being right and the merit of facts, I usually have to calm down and back up to realize that there is no such thing as winning an argument in this kind of situation, only escalating”).

Useful as an annual state-of-the-art address, even if the state of the art would seem to be only middling.

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“Hoagland is from the old school: He makes every word count, but not in the minimalist manner of many younger writers.” from the devil’s tub

ORDINARY SINS Stories

PETITE MORT

Hitchman, Beatrice Serpent’s Tail (288 pp.) $14.95 paper | Nov. 4, 2014 978-1-84668-907-9

Heynen, Jim Illus. by Pohrt, Tom Milkweed (150 pp.) $20.00 | Nov. 11, 2014 978-1-57131-090-3

Hitchman’s debut novel blends the glamour of early cinema with a scandalladen mystery, ideal for Francophiles or lovers of period settings.

In pre–World War I France, teenage Adele Roux leaves behind her sister and her dull provincial life for Paris, determined to become an actress. Instead, she meets studio producer Andre Durand, who sets her up both as his mistress and as assistant to his wife, a famous, temperamental star. Living in their palatial home, Adele is caught up in a growing love triangle with the couple. Still hoping for a film role, she angles for a better future even as she falls deeper into a dangerous affair that ultimately leads to a death.

About 50 years later, a journalist investigates the scandal after a print of the lost film Petite Mort surfaces. She finds that almost nothing about the case is what it appears to be. The mood is stylish and dramatic. Hitchman repeatedly uses images of silver, white and gray to evoke the tones of an early film reel. The liberal use of flashbacks and cutaway scenes adds to the sense that this is a direct novelization of a lost movie. As advertised, there is a twist, though it’s not particularly surprising since the groundwork is laid from the very beginning and breadcrumbs are sprinkled throughout.

More atmospheric than suspenseful, this is a dark and twisting story replete with unreliable characters as passionate as they are opportunistic.

A collection of very short pieces— some less than one page, none longer than two—that find inspiration in character sketches written by the ancient Greek philosopher Theophrastus.

Heynen (The One-room Schoolhouse: Stories About the Boys, 1993, etc.) suggests in his introduction that the “brief verbal snapshots” of his classic model provided the genesis of this collection; the title and the gentle humor throughout attest to his own generosity of spirit. Only one character has a name— the protagonist of the final story, “John Doe” (and he moves through pseudonyms in a “pursuit of anonymity” that draws more unwanted attention to him). Every other protagonist (and the majority of these stories have only one character) is an Everyman or -woman characterized by some eccentricity that may seem odd but isn’t evil and makes for some sort of common bond with the rest of the human menagerie. The author suggests that he might even be “mocking himself ” in some of these pieces, “several of which are thinly disguised self-portraits.” You might not want to invite him home if he’s the hero of “Keeping One’s Secret,” whose “secret was that he urinated wherever he pleased.” Many of the stories, like that one, are essentially character description without the sort of chronological progression that could be termed plot, but those with some action read more like parables or fables.

“The Girl and the Cherry Tree” is about a girl who’s warned that “if you don’t stop eating so many cherries, cherries will start growing out of your ears.” And they do! As a pre-emptive strike, “The Book Reviewer” suggests the sort of disdain that the author of such a collection might feel toward those who will try to categorize it, concluding that it’s “all a matter of taste, anyhow.”

Perhaps “flash fiction” is the name for these stories, but Heynen has been writing them since before that term came into vogue. (Author tour to St. Louis, Wichita, Chicago, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Seattle and Portland)

THE DEVIL’S TUB Collected Stories

Hoagland, Edward Arcade (240 pp.) $24.95 | Oct. 7, 2014 978-1-62872-448-6

Hoagland, widely celebrated as a travel writer, essayist and environmentalist, serves up a retrospective of his short fiction.

He hasn’t published many stories in his 81 years, but Hoagland is a master of the form. The tales, mostly from the 1960s, are decidedly downbeat. Self-delusion plagues its drifters, carnival attractions and assorted nowhere men like a contagion, and the women don’t come off especially well, either. In “The Final Fate of the Alligators” (1969), seaman Arnie Bush finds sexual contentment and a sense of personal “gravity” in his four years with an oftmarried laundromat owner in Galveston, Texas. But when her controlling nature emerges, he leaves her and their young daughter and resettles in a dumpy New York apartment—with a bathtub-dwelling alligator. In the title story, from 2005, Jake Thibodeau, a New England Wall of Death motorcyclist on the |

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An enticing hook and compelling storytelling overcome some small flaws.

down side of his career, tests his mortality under the worst conditions—before lowlifes who couldn’t care less about his fate. In “The Last Irish Fighter” (1960), a faded boxer named Kelly, surrounded by ropes “wrapped in cloth a funeral black,” is stunned and impressed by an opponent with strange moves and wicked sucker punches. Other stories are set in a hospital morgue, a rodeo and on the frontier, where no better fortunes await. For all its bleakness, though, the collection is lifted by the author’s perfectly tempered irony and exquisite descriptions. Hoagland is from the old school: He makes every word count, but not in the minimalist manner of many younger writers. These stories don’t feel confined, opening up worlds we may never before have glimpsed.

A necessary gathering of stories by a writer Saul Bellow rightly called one of the best of his generation.

THE GRAND HOTEL

Kenemore, Scott Talos Press (384 pp.) $15.99 paper | Oct. 7, 2014 978-1-940456-08-9 Baffled tourists in an unnamed city step into another world when they visit a crumbling hotel.

The Grand Hotel is in such disrepair that passersby often don’t know whether the building is actually in use or not. With a flick of a light switch, the all-but-invisible desk manager inevitably startles everyone who ventures in. But when he reassuringly welcomes a group of tourists, he explains that in its heyday the hotel entertained kings, queens, presidents and prime ministers. Besides, it has 333 1/3 rooms, and at least some of them have permanent guests with strange histories. One is Mr. Pence, who doesn’t tell his story outright because he’s a corpse. Yet for 50 years, the food delivered to his room has always been eaten, and his bill has always been paid. The next guest the tourists visit is Mr. Orin, whose tale is not your usual fish story. Ms. Kvasov, who lives in a room full of lifelike dancing wooden mannequins, shares a tale of extortion and revenge, while Detective Click reminisces about a strange case in a haunted house in Chicago. As the desk manager, who comes to be known as Vick, leads the visitors to a succession of residents, all of whom share their bizarre experiences—a conspiracy aboard a secret space ship; a reality show called Ghost Chef filmed in the Outer, Outer Hebrides; a violin with a life of its own; a vengeful spirit in a metal mask—Vick tells the tourists that all ghosts want something. He wants something, too; he’s testing the tourists, especially a precocious redheaded girl.

And as his role at the hotel becomes clearer, so do his intentions in this series of clever occult vignettes inspired by a reallife ancient story cycle.

Kenemore (Zombie, Indiana, 2014, etc.) crafts a series of witty, deliciously creepy tales whose larger story arc is built on growing suspense about the fate of one of the hotel’s visitors.

THE PERFECT WITNESS

Johansen, Iris St. Martin’s (352 pp.) $27.99 | $12.99 e-book | Sep. 30, 2014 978-1-250-02005-5 978-1-250-02006-2 e-book When assassins come after a teen with a rare psychic ability, she’s rescued by an enigmatic warrior who sweeps her into a new life. Danger is never far away, however, and her gift is potent to ene-

mies and allies alike.

The daughter of a ruthless mob boss, Teresa Casali has been forced to use her ability to read people’s memories to benefit her father’s business interests. But when her father is killed and her mother betrays her to his successor, she has to go on the run from his henchmen. Soon a mysterious savior appears to protect her. At first wary of Mandak’s help, she comes to trust him when she realizes he can create a brand-new identity for her as well as help her control her gift. After a few weeks of training and guidance, Mandak sets her up as Allie Girard, a college student living with her “aunt and uncle,” a loving couple who take her into their home and under their wing. Safe for seven years, Allie is suddenly under attack again and must go on the run with Mandak, who she discovers is attached to a shadowy organization that finds and helps psychic individuals around the globe.

Mandak and his group have made a very dangerous enemy, one who has connected some dots and allied with the people who’ve been searching for Allie for years. After years of controlling her gift, Allie is suddenly the best weapon for vanquishing two powerful, brutal villains who will kill her if she doesn’t get to them first, while Mandak is her best hope for survival until they can find their shared enemies. Johansen creates an intriguing world that revolves around a psychic underground and is peppered with some really diabolical bad guys. Readers will likely feel engaged by the story, though a few plot points seem slightly contrived, and the sexual tension between Mandak and Allie begins when she’s 16, which makes sense contextually but feels slightly unwholesome.

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“No one does psychological terror better than King.

Another spine-tingling pleasure for his fans.” from revival

REVIVAL

Michael thinks Ariel is “mad, mad, mad” when she explains what it means to be a “maggot person”—though you look like anyone else, your internal organs are entirely consumed and controlled by maggots, with the squirmy critters now performing every bodily function on their host’s behalf (the brain is left intact, however, so one’s thinking remains functional).

Ariel warns Michael that his transition from humankind to maggot-hood will be fraught with excruciating pain and heavy bleeding but that “no painkillers will be of any use because the maggots eat the painkillers.” She also warns him not to tell anyone about his newfound status—though, as we learn later, maggot people are part of a thriving underground, they’re also hunted and discriminated against by some of the most vaunted echelons of society. After Ariel dies (or, rather, comes as close to death as maggot people can; they don’t die so much as take extended, comalike rests), the narrative chronicles Michael’s European quest to discover the truth about who he is and what his future might hold. Though the core concept of Koch’s first novel (he’s also written the story collection Love Doesn’t Work, 2011) is intriguing, one of the most compelling elements of the book—Michael’s philosophical reflections on identity and connection—begins to get lost in a jumble of increasingly superfluous plot twists.

Some of the deeper themes feel enduringly relevant, and fans of creepy sci-fi-tinged thrillers will enjoy this book. More mainstream fiction readers may find it a touch too out-there.

King, Stephen Scribner (416 pp.) $30.00 | Nov. 11, 2014 978-1-4767-7038-3 In his second novel of 2014 (the other being Mr. Mercedes), veteran yarn spinner King continues to point out the unspeakably spooky weirdness that lies on the fringes of ordinary life.

Think of two central meanings of the title—a religious awakening and bringing someone back to life—and you’ll have King’s latest in a nuthouse. Beg pardon, nutshell, though of course it’s madness that motivates all his most memorable characters. In this instance, a preacher arrives in a small New England town—always a small New England town—with an attractive wife and small child. Soon enough, bad things happen: “The woman had a dripping bundle clasped to her breast with one arm. One arm was all Patsy Jacobs could use, because the other had been torn off at the elbow.” And soon enough, the good reverend, broken by life, is off to other things, while our protagonist drinks deep of the choppy waters of sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll. “My belief had ended,” Jamie Morton says, simply—that is, until Rev. Jacobs turns up in his life again, after having spent time at the horrifying North Carolina amusement park that is Joyland (for which see King’s 2013 novel of the same name) and mastered not just the carney’s trade, but also the mysterious workings of “secret electricity.” Well, as Victor Frankenstein learned, electricity can sometimes get away from a fellow, and though young Jamie pleads with the bereaved pastor to get himself back on the good foot (“The newspapers would call you Josef Mengele.”

“Does anyone call a neurosurgeon Josef Mengele just because he loses some of his patients?”), once it sets to crackling, the secret electricity can’t be put back into the bottle. Faith healing run amok: It’s a theme that’s exercised King since Carrie, and though this latest is less outright scary and more talky than that early touchstone, it compares well.

No one does psychological terror better than King.

Another spine-tingling pleasure for his fans.

BRIGHT COIN MOON

Lopresti, Kirsten Sky Pony Press (272 pp.) $16.95 paper | Nov. 4, 2014 978-1-62914-751-2

An ex–beauty queen, along with her teenage daughter, leaves a hardscrabble life in Oregon for Los Angeles, where she hopes to become a psychic to the stars.

Debbie Allen, a former Miss America contender, and her 17-year-old daughter, Lindsey, scrape by with waitressing and the psychic-reading business they conduct in their garage. Lindsey can read tea leaves and tarot cards and is in on the con, but she would rather devote her energies to school and winning a scholarship to study astronomy in college. But Debbie, equal parts blindly optimistic and perpetually dissatisfied, has other plans: After a mysterious fire burns down their house, they drive to LA, where they can live the life Debbie has always dreamed of. Settled in at the Sepulveda Apartment Complex, with an up-close view of the 405 freeway, Lindsey is soon enrolled as a scholarship student at a Christian school, the same one Paco, her hunky neighbor, attends. At school, Lindsey is mentored by her scholarship benefactor, Joan Fields, a lonely widow whom Debbie marks as their ticket to the good life. Debbie and Lindsey ingratiate themselves with Joan, so when a storm makes their apartment soggy and destroys Joan’s Malibu estate, the three end up living

THE MAGGOT PEOPLE

Koch, Henning Dzanc (231 pp.) $14.95 paper | Nov. 11, 2014 978-1-936873-54-8

Michael, a lonely, aimless Londoner, inherits a family home in the south of France and is surprised to find himself entangled in a passionate tryst with a local beauty named Ariel. He’s even more surprised when she breaks the bizarre news that she’s a “maggot person”—and that because he’s had sex with her, he’s now one, too. |

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THE ASSASSINATION OF MARGARET THATCHER Stories

together in a bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel. This is only the beginning for Debbie, who plans to hold a seance for Joan’s dead husband while fleecing the widow of her considerable savings. Meanwhile, Lindsey is trying to fit in at school and plan for college while conducting an implausibly chaste romance with Paco. Though the novel has some light, sweet moments, the characters feel underdeveloped; while Lindsey and Debbie are essentially small-time grifters (though there’s none of the excitement of that kind of novel here), there’s little exploration of their inner lives.

An appealing plot isn’t enough to support thinly drawn characters.

Mantel, Hilary Henry Holt (256 pp.) $27.00 | $12.99 e-book | Sep. 30, 2014 978-1-62779-210-3 978-1-62779-211-0 e-book Best known for historical novels such as Wolf Hall (2009) and Bring up the Bodies (2012), Mantel proves herself a skilled practitioner of short fiction as well.

“In those days, the doorbell didn’t ring often, and if it did I would draw back into the body of the house.” So opens the first story in Mantel’s slender collection. Like the title story, and indeed like several others, it has a certain claustrophobic, reticent feel to it, its protagonist a retiring type thrust into discomfort by the larger events at play in the street outside.

All of the pieces are worthy of our attention, but the title story is a true tour de force: A house-proud suburbanite has a kitchen window that opens onto a view of a hospital where Margaret Thatcher, in 1983, has had eye surgery, and it is that kitchen window that an IRA sniper wishes to use in order to do the Iron Lady in. Or perhaps not the IRA; remarks the householder, “It crossed my mind then he might not be a Provisional, but from one of the mad splinter groups you heard of.” Can she dissuade the shooter? Will she come to take his view that it’s no crime to slay the killer of so many innocents?

All will be revealed—but after a nice cup of tea, mind you.

Mantel blows up very thin balloons by way of situations and then takes a needle to them: Another story concerns a case of misread intentions in an expat cloister in Saudi Arabia, one of its players described thus: “spiritless, freckled, limp, she was a faded redhead who seemed huddled into herself, unused to conversation.” You just know that great things aren’t going to come from her, and certainly not the history-changing murder of a world leader, just as most of Mantel’s characters are retiring, confused people without much of a clue but who muddle on all the same.

“What would Anita Brookner do?” asks one of Mantel’s protagonists. The answer, we’d like to think, is this: She’d read Mantel’s latest, and she’d delight in it.

BLUE WARRIOR

Maden, Mike Putnam (416 pp.) $26.95 | Oct. 16, 2014 978-0-399-16739-3 A private contractor uses drone weaponry in North African guerrilla warfare.

Political consultant Maden (Drone, 2013) is back with his second novel about the ever expanding world of cutting-edge drone technology and its increased role in global conflicts. Once again, our central actor is Troy Pearce, a Wyoming mountain boy who was previously part of a CIA Special Operations Group in Iraq and Afghanistan. He now runs a private contracting company that specializes in the deployment of “remotely piloted vehicles” and allows him the discretion to choose jobs that are consistent with his moral compass. He has by no means denounced allegiance to America, because “Pearce still loved his country but hated politics.” As a consequence, his loyalty to former U.S. President Margaret Meyers, along with a desire to help friends in need, draws him into a complicated web of international business, political intrigue and nontraditional conflict. Pearce sets out to find a former lover and an old comrade who are in the middle of a multiparty combat zone in North Africa, where he uses his extensive drone weaponry to defend friends, new and old, in a series of desert clashes. The Chinese government is on the ground due to interests in mining lanthanum (a rare earth element critical for the production of batteries). There’s also an al-Qaida Sahara group that’s pushing a jihadist agenda and the fierce fighting force of the legendary nomadic Tuareg people, who are pushing a nationalist agenda.

Add a roving French Foreign Legion force and let the fireworks erupt. The inclusion of all of these conflicting parties and interests makes for a narrative that can be hard to follow, but the back story about Pearce and his lover provides a quick glimpse of Maden’s developing ability to tell a tale.

A multifaceted political thriller that will delight tech junkies.

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OUR SECRET LIFE IN THE MOVIES

McGriff, Michael; Tyree, J.M. A Strange Object (168 pp.) $14.95 paper | Nov. 4, 2014 978-0-9892759-6-5

Coming-of-age along the weirder edges of late-20th-century America is evoked through a montage of gritty, frequently bizarre tales spinning obliquely off cult and classic movies. |

“When an accident shakes up their lives, the Gillespies are forced to take on new roles, and the novel gains momentum.” from hello from the gillespies

If you were to read a story about a man who leaves his family to marry one of a dozen eggs he buys at a grocery store (yes, you read it right the first time), would it occur to you to somehow connect this to the 1983 science-fiction thriller Blade Runner? Assuming you’d seen the movie and given some thought to its theme, you might—or you might dismiss the connection altogether. Such challenges to memory and intellect make this novel as close to an interactive experience as reading a collection of cutting-edge short fiction can be. McGriff and Tyree take turns writing brief stories inspired by, but not directly connected to, the same movies. Some links are easier to make than others: The railroad-tracks riff deployed by both writers off George Washington (2000) will resonate with those who remember a principal setting of David Gordon Green’s haunting reverie of childhoods at risk, while On the Waterfront (1954) inspires one of the writers (there are no bylines) to take a surrealistic stroll along the docks while the other takes off after someone who ratted him out. But after a while, it doesn’t matter how you match your memories of the movies with theirs or whether you’ve seen all of them. Because what emerges from these sometimes-opaque, often strikingly realistic sketches is a portrait of suburban or rural youth from the 1980s to the present day; “linked snapshots,” as the authors’ introduction aptly puts it, “chronicling our parallel trajectories as the last children of the Cold War.” An intriguing, frequently affecting experiment that challenges its readers to think anew about sharpening and refracting their memories of both life and art.

the Outback—for the most part, the family handles the airing of their secrets to friends and family around the world reasonably well. It’s Angela’s mention of her fantasies about having chosen a different husband, life and family that truly upsets them. When an accident shakes up their lives, the Gillespies are forced to take on new roles, and the novel gains momentum.

McInerney writes with a deep respect for her characters, allowing each the opportunity to help reshape the narrative of next year’s inevitable Christmas letter.

In a book written with humor and charm, family members show the best of themselves after the people on their wife and mother’s mailing list saw them at their worst.

THE FIRELIGHT GIRLS

McLaren, Kaya St. Martin’s (352 pp.) $15.99 paper | $9.99 e-book Oct. 14, 2014 978-1-250-01977-6 978-1-250-01979-0 e-book

When the Firelight Girls’ summer camp is about to be closed, a few of its former campers return to the best memories of their childhood.

Ethel doesn’t relish the job, but someone has to clean up Camp Firelight to ready it for sale. The camp, on a lake in Washington, has felt like home for most of her life: first as a camper there in 1940; then as a counselor in the 1950s, where she met her life partner, Haddie; and later as its director until her retirement to a cabin only a canoe ride away. Haddie has passed away (though she’s not entirely gone—Ethel drew a face on her urn and attached a yarn wig), and it seems Ethel’s whole life is collapsing. She emails camp alumni to help clear out, and those who come bring both memories and problems. First to arrive is Ruby, Ethel’s bosom buddy until family pressure (because of Ethel and Haddie’s relationship) forced her to shun her friend.

Now she’s looking for forgiveness. Shannon and Laura arrive, both in their 40s and at a crossroads—Laura is considering divorcing her husband, and Shannon has just given up on her teaching career. Unbeknownst to everyone, 15-year-old Amber is hiding in one of the cabins, having run away from a dangerous home life. Much of the novel is given to flashbacks to a time in the four women’s lives that felt powerful and boundless. Now, as adults, they wonder how they can regain that resilience. The camp works as a balm to Amber, who, after she’s discovered, is nurtured for the first time in years. Somehow things turn out surprisingly well; everyone chalks it up to the magic of the camp, though it could be an authorial desire for happy endings.

A likable, if somewhat predictable, tale of female friendship and resiliency.

HELLO FROM THE GILLESPIES

McInerney, Monica New American Library (496 pp.) $16.00 paper | Nov. 4, 2014 978-0-451-46672-3

McInerney (The House of Memories, 2014, etc.) serves up a satisfying family drama stemming from a fed-up woman finally coming clean in her traditional Christmas letter.

For more than 30 years, Angela Gillespie has been sending out an annual letter on Dec. 1, rife with platitudes about her family that hide a far more complicated picture. But after a particularly trying year, she sits at her computer and tells a different story. When her son, Ig, requires a trip to the emergency room—quite a journey from their home in Errigal, a remote sheep station in the Australian Outback—her husband, Nick, sees the draft on her computer and surprises her by pressing “send” so her missive won’t be late arriving in the inboxes of more than 100 readers. Though Angela was brutally honest in the letter—chronicling her three daughters’ financial, career and relationship woes, her young son’s recent dismissal from boarding school and attachment to an imaginary friend, and her own fears of her husband’s infidelity and emotional distance, as well as his rash decision to make a clandestine deal with a mining company that could wreak havoc on |

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GENESIS CODE

in the paper-making industry, is now a broken reed, his health ruined, his empire failing after bad investments. On the middle floors of the house live the second and third Ghosh generations, three married sons with their children and a sour spinster daughter, and below them, the disgraced widow of a bad-seed fourth son. The family’s history is intricately, nonchronologically narrated in brief episodes that point up the power struggles, petty jealousies, cruelties and sexual attractions among the individual members. Mingled with these episodes are extracts from a diary written by Prafullanath’s eldest grandson, Supratik, who has absconded to become a Communist Naxalite guerrilla among the rural poor. Supratik’s chapters offer glimpses of the extremes of poverty and corruption in Bengal and of its essential beauties too—the green velvet of the rice paddies, the monsoon rains. But political violence emerges in Supratik’s story, matched by union troubles at the Ghosh paper mills. After Supratik’s eventual return to the Calcutta household, its unraveling gains pace. Mukherjee closes with two epilogues that offer contrasting views of the consequences.

This is an immensely accomplished, steady-handed achievement, Victorian in its solidity, quietly enthralling in its insightful observation of the ties that bind.

Metzl, Jamie Arcade (336 pp.) $24.95 | Nov. 4, 2014 978-1-62872-423-3 An old-fashioned hard-boiled thriller addresses up-to-the-minute political currents as seen from a short time in the future.

Rich Azadian is a news reporter who knows how to work a story, sifting through garbage cans and not letting go once he has a lead. It’s 2023, and China has emerged as the true world power. The U.S. has created a Department of National Competitiveness to bring the country back from technological and financial brinks. Rich and his intern at the Kansas City Star are reporting on the murder of a bright, 20-something medical student, MaryLee Stock, who happens to have been pregnant.

Maurice Henderson, chief inspector on the case, allows Rich access and surreptitiously helps him as the investigation quickly get blocked by the medical examiner, some goons in dark SUVs, the police hierarchy, and, eventually, the feds, who threaten to pull the Star’s government funding (as the nation’s newspapers have finally succumbed to financial inefficiencies). The hunt through the Holy Virgin Church of Christ, where the victim was a member and designated “the chosen one,” leads to a fertility clinic, offshore ownership and a deeper mystery of genetic manipulation—the Genesis Code—that is part of a biological race with the Chinese. Metzl knows his science, and the detail is elegantly done while the novel moves at a nonstop pace over 41 days.

Metzl provides a believable look at a not-too-distant future where science, politics, religion, economics and the ability to report the “truth” are all inseparably bound together.

FAMILY FURNISHINGS Selected Stories, 1995-2014

Munro, Alice Knopf (576 pp.) $30.00 | Nov. 13, 2014 978-1-101-87410-3

Top-shelf collection by Canadian Nobelist Munro, perhaps the best writer of short stories in English today.

Certainly few, if any, narrators are less trustworthy than Munro’s; among many other things, she is the ascended master of quiet betrayals, withheld information and unforeseeable reversals of fortune. “We say of some things that they can’t be forgiven,” says the thoughtful narrator of “Dear Life,” the closing story, “or that we will never forgive ourselves. But we do—we do it all the time.” Yes, we do, but not without torment.

Fiona, the protagonist of “The Bear Came Over the Mountain,” the stunning story that is the heart of Sarah Polley’s great film Away From Her, cannot be blamed for causing the pain she does: Dementia has overtaken her, but even so, her husband can’t help but wonder whether “she isn’t putting on some kind of a charade.” People put on acts, of course, all the time, and Munro seems to be telling us (as at the very opening of the sly story “The Eye”) that we bamboozle each other from the moment we can understand language—and not necessarily for any malicious reasons. Munro packs plenty of compact but lethal punches, many of them hidden in seemingly gentle words: “I have not kept up with Charlene. I don’t even remember how we said good-bye.” Well, yes, she does, because “[y]ou expected things to end,” and all that catches up to the chief player in “Child’s Play” when she’s called upon to say goodbye again. As is true

THE LIVES OF OTHERS

Mukherjee, Neel Norton (416 pp.) $26.95 | Oct. 1, 2014 978-0-393-24790-9

The evolution of an upper-class Bengali family in the late 1960s reflects India’s political turbulence in this confidently expansive second novel from Mukherjee (A Life Apart, 2010), which has been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.

Like a rolling stone, Mukherjee’s nonostentatious epic accrues its weight and mass gradually; it’s a three-generational family saga that embraces tensions both micro- and macro-cosmic.

The majestic Ghosh family mansion in Calcutta reflects the nation’s entrenched economic hierarchy, with the wealthy patriarch, Prafullanath, and his wife, Charubala, on the top floor and the servant classes and spurned family members at the bottom.

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LAST WINTER WE PARTED

of so many of Munro’s tales, taken straight from the pages of quotidian life, its end is heartbreaking, tragic, not a little mysterious—and entirely unexpected.

In fact, all that can be expected from these economical, expertly told stories is that they’re near peerless, modern literary fiction at its very best.

Nakamura, Fuminori Translated by Markin Powell, Allison Soho (224 pp.) $25.00 | Oct. 21, 2014 978-1-61695-455-0

In a story as claustrophobic as the prison cell housing its villain, a nameless, naïve writer struggles to maintain boundaries while researching the life of a death row prisoner.

Nakamura (Evil and the Mask, 2013, etc.) artfully mixes straight narration with snippets of (invented) archival material and correspondence to illustrate the life—and crimes—of Tokyo photographer Yudai Kiharazaka, soon to be executed for the murders of two women. The parallels between Truman Capote and his all-encompassing obsession with the Clutter murders that became In Cold Blood are evident—the writer’s gruff editor even name-checks the nonfiction novel in an attempt to goad his employee into finishing the Kiharazaka book. A prominent photographer best known for a photograph called “Butterflies,” Kiharazaka allegedly—his guilt becomes less and less of a certainty as the plot unspools, adding to the general feeling of unease—set two women alight in his studio and photographed them as their bodies burned.

The writer soon realizes that interviewing his subject will be a more difficult endeavor than he bargained for: In an echo of the Hannibal Lecter/Clarice Starling “quid pro quo” arrangement, the writer finds himself divulging personal information in order to keep Kiharazaka talking. What happens outside the prison is arguably even more disturbing, as the writer meets Kiharazaka’s older, mysterious sister Akari and a famed doll maker whose creations are eerily lifelike. Overwhelmed, the writer tries to back out of the project only to discover that he’s hopelessly ensnared in the story.

While the numerous narrative shifts require a fully engaged reader, the complex—and morally twisted—plot rewards with one unexpected punch after another.

THE STRANGE LIBRARY

Murakami, Haruki Translated by Goossen, Ted Knopf (96 pp.) $18.00 | Dec. 2, 2014 978-0-385-35430-1

“I’m going to slice you up nice and fine and feed you to the centipedes.”

Another off-kilter yarn from master storyteller Murakami: allegorical, shadowy and not at all nice.

Murakami (Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, 2014, etc.) loves two things among many: Franz Kafka (think Kafka on the Shore) and secret places (think 1Q84). This latest, brief and terse, combines those two passions in the frightening vision of a hapless young man who, returning two books—How to Build a Submarine and Memoirs of a Shepherd—to the library, is sent to Room 107, deep in a basement he didn’t know existed.

Confronted by an apparently friendly but nevertheless nononsense old man, the youngster allows that he’s interested in “how taxes were collected in the Ottoman Empire.” And who wouldn’t be? Well, that’s enough to send our young fellow into a nightmare world featuring a blandly mysterious young woman, a sheep man, the ever present threat of danger and the nagging worry that his mom is going to be upset when he doesn’t show up for supper. Even so, our young man has the presence of mind to ask the right questions: How, given strapped municipal budgets and library cuts, could “our city library have such an enormous labyrinth in its basement?” And why is he being imprisoned— for the answer comes back positive to his question of the Sheep Man, “Is this by any chance a jail cell?” It would take a Terry Gilliam, or perhaps a Kurosawa, to film Murakami’s nightmare properly, and if the reader may well be puzzled over what the story, published in Japan in 2005, means at heart, then the prospect of the young man’s being freed only if he passes rigorous questioning over, yes, taxation in the Ottoman Empire will ignite the fear-of-a-long-ago-final-exam syndrome in all of us.

At once beguiling and disquieting—in short, trademark Murakami—a fast read that sticks in the mind. (32 full-color illustrations)

AN ENGLISH GHOST STORY

Newman, Kim Titan Books (304 pp.) $14.95 paper | $9.95 e-book Oct. 7, 2014 978-1-78116-558-4 978-1-78116-559-1 e-book

The perennial reinventor of classic horror turns his sights on the traditional English haunted-house story.

The Naremores, having suffered through an epic family meltdown, decide to move from London to the Somerset countryside to reconnect with one another, a prospect that seems dismal at best until the family stumbles as if by magic onto the Hollow, a rambling orchard |

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An incomplete examination of what it’s like to be a kid; a glimpse in the mirror out of the corner of one’s eye instead of a photograph that can be studied over and over again.

house that was, until recently, the home of twee children’s book author Louise Magellan Teazle. Miss Teazle’s series featured haunted locations and friendly ghosts, and the family begins to suspect that her stories might not have been entirely invented. The Naremores—father Steven, wife Kirsty, teenage daughter Jordan and precocious son Tim—are pulled into the orbit of the Hollow, and welcomed by its longtime ghostly inhabitants, in different ways. Kirsty finds a magic chest of drawers that makes objects disappear, then reappear after they’ve been disturbingly deconstructed; Tim plays soldier in the orchard with the spirits of the Hollow; Jordan finds her shawl floating in midair; and Steven thinks maybe, just maybe, the house will heal a rift in the family that he’d begun to think was irreparable. But it isn’t long before Miss Teazle’s irritating fan club begins imposing on the Naremores, and the ghostly presences start to turn on the family. Before long, Tim’s playing at soldier starts to seem less like a child’s game and more like preparation for an all-out ghostly war.

A tongue-in-cheek ghost story that winks at the haunted-house trope without bringing much that’s new to the table, though a few moments of genuine fright should thrill readers looking for a new take on an old classic.

INTO A RAGING BLAZE

Norman, Andreas Translated by Giles, Ian Quercus (592 pp.) $26.99 | $12.99 e-book | Nov. 4, 2014 978-1-62365-802-1 978-1-62365-803-8 e-book An oddly named but engaging spy thriller translated from the Swedish.

Carina Dymek is a young, midlevel civil servant for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Stockholm with the job of analyzing European Union security policies. After a meeting in Brussels, a stranger introduces himself as Jean and persuades her to accept a USB memory stick. On it, he explains, is secret information about a proposed European Intelligence Service that would create a European spy organization without the knowledge of elected public officials. Why give it to her? “You have a conscience,” he explains, asking her to read the proposal and leak its contents to the right people. Soon her troubles begin. Her bosses quickly learn that she has the memory stick. They interrogate her about it, but she doesn’t give it up, and they suspend her from her duties. She must locate the mysterious Jean to help clear her name, but that seems impossible. Meanwhile, Bente Jensen of the Swedish Security Service is investigating Carina and her Egyptian boyfriend, Jamal, who authorities believe are up to no good. Are they planning a major terrorist attack? Bente doesn’t think so, but her colleagues do. They intercept an email with an Arabic poem that says, “Their fire will loom before you, kindling desire into a raging blaze.” That sounds like a metaphor for an act of terror, and soon the chase is on to arrest Carina and Jamal. While the novel’s title comes from that quote, it misleads the reader about what the book delivers. Still, there is tension and excitement, with a plot that builds steadily. Bente and Carina are strong and sympathetic women whose interests coincide when a conspiracy unfolds. Bente delivers the best line: “If you’re going to lie then you have to do so truthfully.”

There’s plenty to like in this plausible and well-written tale.

TICKET TO CHILDHOOD

Nguyen, Nhat Anh Translated by Naythons, William Overlook (192 pp.) $21.95 | Oct. 9, 2014 978-1-4683-0959-1

Childhood is a stage of our lives that we can access any time as long as we have a “ticket,” or a way of transporting us—at least that’s what Vietnamese writer Anh says in this straightforward and occasionally charming novel.

Mui, the narrator, is a middle-aged man recounting (and imagining) the freedom and creativity he had when he was 8.

The antics and philosophical tidbits he shares center around his group of friends: Hai, Tun and Ti. Mui is ostensibly writing a paper called “Children as a World” that he intends to present at a UNESCO Vietnam workshop. But it’s also made clear that he’s fictionalizing his own life. His friends, now that they’re older, visit him to talk about what he’ll include in the book.

Mui talks about his childhood in brief vignettes—ranging from a failed attempt to train wild dogs to digging up a yard in order to find buried treasure to trying to change the order of the world and resist the rules adults impose on everything: “We wanted to rename everything in the universe as if we had just created it.” The main thing, it seems, is to challenge the patterns that adults fall into. “Many people are afraid of sadness, but I’m not one of them. I’m only afraid of boredom,” the narrator says. The author is interested in the ways children engage with the world and how they have a “power to imagine the world differently,” but there are more obvious observations than original thinking here.

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REIGN OF EVIL

enigmatic British military man, and a contingent of unsmiling guards. Sandberg is given a mysterious code to break, but Connors and his other captors refuse to provide all the details he needs. After a series of alarming revelations and much personal upheaval, William and Janine, who was also abducted, discover the unsettling, mind-boggling truth about what their real task is and come to some staggering conclusions. Although time is running out for the human race, they rush to find a solution despite ever dwindling options and the prospect of certain disaster. On the minus side, Olsson crams the book full of annoying onesentence paragraphs, adds the popular action-novel device of ending each chapter on a cliffhanger, and obfuscates the storyline with a confusing explanation of why the kidnappers chose their particular course of action. On the plus side, Olsson lines up a sympathetic and well-developed cast of characters, inserts them into some interesting places, and allows very few dull moments, especially once the action really gets rolling.

An end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it thriller featuring two unlikely, but very likable, protagonists.

Ochse, Weston Dunne/St. Martin’s (336 pp.) $26.99 | $12.99 e-book | Oct. 14, 2014 978-1-250-05600-9 978-1-4668-5958-6 e-book A Navy SEAL team defends Britain against supernatural creatures.

Retired Army intelligence officer Ochse (Age of Blood, 2013, etc.) introduces the third book about his fictitious SEAL Team 666, a military unit that specializes in doing battle with the supernatural. When Navy SEAL Jack Walker’s fiancee is killed during a mysterious druid ritual at Stonehenge, the commando hops over the pond to find answers and vengeance in England.

The few remaining members of Section 9—Britain’s counterpart to SEAL team 666—aid Walker’s quest for answers by connecting him with a witch who serves as a conduit to the dark demons on the other side of the natural world. However, threats become severe with the appearance of homunculi, or what Walker calls “Freddy Krueger–Stretch Armstrong serial-killing fucking minigolems,” and half human–half beast dogs that are inhabited by the souls of the recently deceased. When the American Seal team unites with their cohorts in Britain, these elite warriors realize that the secret societies of the Red Grove and the Bohemian Grove are behind an elaborate plot, which includes restoring ancient pagan Christmas rituals. The ultimate goal of these ceremonies, many of which revolve around sexual deviance, is to bring back the mythical King Arthur with the intention that he’ll return Britain to its former glory. Enter enigmatic spirits who inhabit the bodies of a wide array of human hosts, and this makes for an intense showdown that will decide the future of Britain.

With minimal character development, this is a fastpaced adventure that straddles the worlds of special operations and the paranormal.

NEW YORK 1, TEL AVIV 0 Stories

Oria, Shelly Farrar, Straus and Giroux (208 pp.) $14.00 paper | Nov. 4, 2014 978-0-374-53457-8 In this debut collection, Oria tests her characters’ definitions of nationality, gender and relationship status, their tenuous senses of belonging to a place

and to others.

These are crisply told, biting tales about characters split in two because of country or love. Everything is up in the air for these people; they have no feelings of security or comfort or home. In the title story, a woman in a polyamorous relationship becomes jealous at the discovery of her girlfriend and boyfriend having sex without her. She feels suddenly out of place. “There are two Me’s,” she says: the tough Israeli soldier and the woman trying to fit in in America, where “once a week she gets lost in the city on purpose, then walks—no maps, no questions—until she finds her way home.” In the unsettling and surreal “Victor, Changed Man,” Victor desperately tries to get the woman he loves to come back to him, but she literally disappears into a fog so catastrophic that the city’s “fog clearers were threatening to go on strike.” In the Cheever-esque “Beep,” a woman hears an infernal repetitive sound in her apartment, but no one else seems able to hear it. And in “My Wife in Converse,” Oria explores a newly legalized lesbian marriage—“Before my wife married me, she was married to a man”—which has already fallen apart, leaving the narrator lost and writing forlorn poetry.

Oria’s fiction is tense and gripping; it’s like the surprising and disconcerting sound that emerges from an instrument played by a traditionally trained musician who’s chosen to explore new territory.

CHAIN OF EVENTS

Olsson, Fredrik T. Little, Brown (432 pp.) $26.00 | $12.99 e-book | Nov. 4, 2014 978-0-316-33500-3 978-0-316-33499-0 e-book Swedish scriptwriter Olsson’s first novel amps up the action via a doomsday scenario set in Europe.

William Sandberg, a retired Swedish cryptologist, tries to kill himself but is thwarted by his vigilant former wife, prominent newspaper executive Christina. Christina worries that her ex-husband is planning another go at it, but before he can try, he’s abducted from the hospital, installed on a private plane and flown to an unknown destination. When he awakens, he finds himself in a chateau with an eclectic group including Janine Haynes, a brilliant doctoral candidate studying ancient codes, Connors, an |

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SINS OF OUR FATHERS

wrecked his family when his movie-star father drifted away in favor of glitz. For this reason, perhaps, the 20-year-old narrator finds himself drawn to “the world’s ugliest woman,” a sweet person his own age who works with him. Although ugliness is one of the novel’s themes, Park’s work is anything but. The novel glitters with poetic language (“Her three words, I love you, were [a] blade of grass”), often blanketing the characters in snow, making the novel feel hushed and still—a story told in a whisper late at night while, elsewhere, people try to sleep. Park’s novel has a youthful wisdom that occasionally borders on the pretentious and/or mundane, as youthful wisdom often does. “This world is one big sham,” says a young man named Yohan, the narrator’s friend and the third major character. This idea of sham isn’t an unfamiliar sentiment in novels about young people, but what Park occasionally lacks is a perspective on this sort of philosophizing; does he find it naïve, astute, absurd or what? This is a small complaint, however, about a book that works, more than anything, like music, with the lyrics of specific songs (particularly “Strawberry Fields Forever”) woven through the pages like a soundtrack. (One might recall the films of Wong-Kar Wai—how they often repurpose the same two or three songs in a multitude of situations.) The ending dips too far into metafictional trickery, but the result is an oddly optimistic book about broken hearts.

The warmth and romance of this novel will make cynics smile.

Otto, Shawn Lawrence Milkweed (352 pp.) $26.00 | Nov. 18, 2014 978-1-57131-109-2

A white banker tries to thwart a Native American entrepreneur while handling his midlife crisis in this first novel set in rural Minnesota.

When John “JW” White met uppercrust Carol Ingersoll, he was a teenage horse trainer; after they married, he worked his way up to head the local bank. They had a good marriage until their son died in a car accident. As the novel opens, a year after the family’s tragedy, JW is advising a group of bankers on how to secure Native Americans’ deposits while denying them loans. After his slick presentation, he stops at an Indian-owned casino but finds that he can’t leave: He’s addicted to gambling. The unraveling that began with his son’s death has led JW to a temporary separation from Carol and their daughter, Julie, and now his gambling losses lead him to be evicted from his apartment. Can things get worse? You bet. His ruthless boss, Frank Jorgenson, fears a charismatic young Ojibwe, Johnny Eagle, is building his own bank, threatening the collapse of theirs. Jorgenson’s instruction is terse: Stop him. He’s discovered that JW embezzled money from the bank and is suspending him until he delivers. JW isn’t used to playing rough, but he’ll do anything to reunite his family, so he rents a trailer across from Eagle’s house on the reservation, which he bugs. Soon he’s working for Eagle’s wild rice operation and teaching his troubled teenage son horsemanship.

These naturalistic scenes anchor the story. But will the fundamentally decent JW switch his allegiance to the virtuous Eagle?

Here Otto is much less sure-footed. Unable to convey the bland JW’s spiritual struggle, which should have been the heart of the matter, he serves up instead a creaky plot involving safe-cracking, two shootings and two cases of arson.

Ethnic animosities make for an awkward fit with standard-issue midlife floundering.

FULL MEASURE

Parker, T. Jefferson St. Martin’s (288 pp.) $25.99 | $12.99 e-book | Oct. 7, 2014 978-1-250-05200-1 978-1-4668-5299-0 e-book A young Marine returns from Afghanistan to find his small California hometown almost as dangerous as the threats he faced from the Taliban.

Twenty-two-year-old Patrick Norris is slowly adjusting to civilian life in Fallbrook, California, but with Camp Pendleton’s close proximity—and his own vivid memories—it’s hard to leave the military behind. His family’s avocado farm recently suffered major losses after a fire, likely arson, tore through the surrounding area, one of the worst arson blazes in recent history. His father, Archie, isn’t sure any of the trees will survive, and he’s been unable to get bank loans to shore up the family’s dwindling finances. Patrick’s re-entry into civilian life is contrasted with his perpetual screw-up of an older brother, 26-year-old Ted, whose “life had been a series of quiet failures.” Useless at the farm, Ted recently got expelled from college for drawing an inflammatory cartoon of the town’s mayor. It’s no wonder he finds solace with Cade Magnus, an outspoken white supremacist who’s recently come back to Fallbrook and attracts loners and social outliers to his group, the Rogue Wolves. Parker (The Famous and the Dead, 2013, etc.) can’t seem to decide which brother is the more interesting hero—or

PAVANE FOR A DEAD PRINCESS

Park, Min-Gyu Translated by Kim, Amber Hyun Jung Dalkey Archive (208 pp.) $15.95 paper | $14.99 e-book Oct. 14, 2014 978-1-62897-066-1 978-1-62897-071-5 e-book Korean writer Park’s new novel examines the mysteries of attraction and the

falsehoods of beauty.

“Write about something pretty,” Park’s narrator, an aspiring writer, hears from a friend—but the narrator lives his life in revolt against the beautiful, having seen how aesthetics 38

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COME AWAY

antihero—and the split focus unfortunately halves the dramatic tension: Whenever we linger on Ted’s increasingly creepy behavior, it seems like we should be paying attention to Patrick, and vice versa. The final showdown—between both the characters and the whims of nature—is predictable and flat.

Parker’s first foray out of his established—and awardwinning—crime-fiction niche is a disappointment, despite some compelling subject matter.

Policoff, Stephen Dzanc (150 pp.) $14.95 paper | Nov. 11, 2014 978-1-936873-60-9 A conversational, contemporary fable about children and parents and letting go.

The author (Beautiful Somewhere Else, 2004) has written books for adults as well as teen fiction and even a children’s book, and this reads like a hybrid—with a style that could easily pass for a teen book but a thematic focus that aims at adults, parents in particular. The narrator is Paul, a sad sack who was some kind of writer until the birth of his daughter, Spring, whose mother he married when she was four months pregnant. She’s his third wife, young, attractive and full of life, so it’s hard for the reader (as well as Paul) to understand what she sees in him. Most of the narration takes place inside his head, where he conjures aphorisms such as “My life’s work seems to be just getting through my life” and “Doing nothing has always been my strongest skill.” Most of what little happens in this novel concerns 5-year-old Spring, who suffered a fall, went to the hospital, and may or may not have had a seizure. The major cause for concern is that Spring keeps seeing a little green girl, who would seem to be an imaginary friend, except that Paul sees her too. Before Spring, says Paul, “I can’t say being a father was ever high on my list. It made the list, sure—but somewhere above understanding the laws of physics and below learning to appreciate Cubism.” But now his daughter is his life. Over the course of the novel, both Spring and Paul must come to separate terms with the green girl, and Paul must face the reality articulated by Spring’s teacher: “Oh, they are not really ours, are they?...They are all on loan.”

A breezy meditation on what it means to be a child, and a parent.

THE SIEGE

Pérez-Reverte, Arturo Translated by Wynne, Frank Random House (624 pp.) $28.00 | $13.99 e-book | Nov. 4, 2014 978-1-4000-6968-2 978-0-8129-9472-8 e-book Pirates; serial killings; steamy, unrequited love: Pérez-Reverte (Pirates of the Levant, 2010, etc.) imbues the sensational with significance.

It’s 1811, and as Napoleon’s army relentlessly shells the port of Cadiz, Spain, the city finds itself the target of a much more sinister presence. A shadowy figure is brutally murdering young women, and as amoral policeman Rogelio Tizon stalks this prey, he begins to realize that the murders and the French bombs are somehow intertwined. At the same time, the handsome Lolita Palma, upstanding owner of a shipping company, agrees to do business with corsair Pepe Lobo and soon finds herself drawn to his rough charms. And a mysterious taxidermist sends a secret carrier pigeon to a French captain, adding one more pin to his map of bombs. As Napoleon’s war rages on, the world finds itself in a vortex of change, with science competing against faith and tradition to help create a new world order. Pérez-Reverte begins with several different strands of story and weaves them into a rather impressive web. The level of detail is meticulous but also beautiful; his descriptions of the town and people of Cadiz capture colors, smells and personalities, making the page come to life, and he balances these sensory passages with dense observations about history, metaphysics, science and human nature. Whether the brutality of the murderer, and in fact of the war, is a result of “the imagination [running] out of control” or “atmospheric conditions” doesn’t ultimately matter to the story. Pérez-Reverte presents a chessboard on which the epic battle of science and fate becomes the story. In the end, it’s about “the dark chasms of the human mind,” a timeless theme if ever there was one.

A genre-bending literary thriller worth the time.

BLUE LABYRINTH

Preston, Douglas; Child, Lincoln Grand Central Publishing (416 pp.) $27.00 | $12.99 e-book | Nov. 11, 2014 978-1-4555-2589-8 978-1-4555-2590-4 e-book Preston and Child (White Fire, 2013, etc.) return with another adventure for modern crime fiction’s most esoteric detective, FBI agent Aloysius Pendergast.

Badged by the FBI but given free rein, wealthy as a wizard Wall Street trader, intelligent enough to make Mensa members feel inferior, master of exotic Chongg Ran meditation, Pendergast, “skin as pale as marble, eyes like silver conchas,” shoulders his custom 1911 Les Baer Thunder Ranch Special .45 and sets out to find the killer who deposited his estranged son, Alban, dead on his Manhattan mansion’s doorstep. Alban is autopsied, and an exotic turquoise is found |

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in his stomach. At the American Museum of Natural History, Pendergast consults an expert gemologist—worth reading if buying turquoise—and heads for California’s Salton Sea in search of the Golden Spider Mine, all while giving only passing notice to a museum murder under investigation by his friend Lt. Vincent D’Agosta. So begins Pendergast’s deconstruction of a deadly conspiracy originating with patent medicine and ending with bizarre battles—triflic acid, poison darts and Sumatran buckthorn as weapons—at the museum and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. A Pendergast ancestor, Hezekiah, built the family’s fortune on an elixir that ultimately left users with ALS- or Huntingon’s Disease–like symptoms. Now the villain is spurred by epigenetic changes wrought on users’ descendants by “Hezekiah’s Compound Elixir and Glandular Restorative.”

Pendergast visits exotic climes for clues, and the authors offer sparkling descriptions—the Salton Fontainebleau is a “fantastical cross between a Chinese temple and an Asbury Park amusement parlor.” Constance Greene and other familiar characters appear, and Pendergast learns a startling truth about Alban, whose warped psyche had once wrought havoc.

Great character-driven crime fiction—readers new to the series won’t be entirely lost, and Pendergast patrons will be thoroughly satisfied.

including pages and pages of inconsequential details that result in a thriller that doesn’t really thrill until it approaches the 400page–plus mark. Still, for a glimpse of life under the American occupation in Iraq, few could come close to Prusher’s portrait.

A really good book that would have benefited from judicious pruning.

THE GERMAN DOCTOR

Puenzo, Lucía Translated by Foster, David William Hesperus/Trafalgar (208 pp.) $15.95 paper | Nov. 1, 2014 978-1-84391-543-0 Puenzo’s first novel to be translated into English follows Dr. Josef Mengele to Patagonia, where, in 1960, he insinuates himself into the household of an unsuspecting family.

After following Enzo, Eva and their children, Tomas and Lilith, through a freak snowstorm to the guesthouse they’re opening, “Jose,” as he styles himself, settles in to do what he does best. “Poets write what they see, painters paint it, I weigh and measure everything that interests me,” he blandly informs 12-year-old Lilith. The girl’s become his special confidante because she’s physically perfect except for being barely 4 feet tall—an abnormality the good doctor is only too eager to treat with daily injections of growth hormones—and because a recent injury to her Herlitzka, the beloved doll Enzo made her years ago, introduces Jose to the wonderful world of dollmaking and doll repair, which turn out to be not all that different from the Nazi-era experiments on human beings that have made him the world’s most notorious fugitive. As a bonus, Eva is pregnant and so much bigger, to Jose’s practiced eye, than her estimated delivery date would indicate that he strongly suspects she’s going to have twins, a subject in which he’s always taken a particular clinical interest. Instead of developing most of the characters in depth, Puenzo stays unnervingly close to Jose, with occasional forays to the minds of Lilith or her father, sustaining an atmosphere of decorous dread that’s threatened only by the arrival of a Mossad operative.

A film adaptation has preceded this English translation, spoiling the novel for film festival attendees, but even for readers who haven’t seen the movie, the long-portended climax is an inevitable letdown from Puenzo’s chilling exploration of the banality of evil.

BAGHDAD FIXER

Prusher, Ilene Halban (688 pp.) $17.95 paper | Nov. 1, 2014 978-1-905559-47-3 Prusher’s glimpse at the journalist/ fixer relationship in embattled Iraq in 2003 offers an intimate view of how news is collected, reported and, sometimes, slanted.

The random shooting of an Iraqi woman in war-torn Baghdad brings together Nabil al-Amari, an English teacher, and Samara “Sam” Katchens, an American journalist camped out at the Hamra Hotel with dozens of other foreign reporters, relentlessly trolling for fresh, new stories. Nabil is fascinated by Sam’s fiery hair, brassy attitude and casual dress, all very different from the women in his country.

When Sam offers him a job that pays well in a country with little opportunity, Nabil agrees to work as her “fixer”—someone who translates, solves problems, and assists foreign reporters and photographers. At first, Nabil isn’t quite sure what to think of Sam; her contempt for American soldiers and simulated empathy when she’s after a story confuse him. Then they’re pulled off reporting war-related stories to investigate a piece by a famous writer that impugns an important African-American politician who opposes the war. During their investigation, Nabil finds himself drawn to Sam, but soon her recklessness endangers her, himself and everyone he loves. Prusher’s spot-on descriptions of both the craft of reporting and the Iraqi landscape during that volatile time make this novel memorable and informative. But, though the author’s writing is strong, she weakens her work by 40

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“These stories describe a hardscrabble landscape streaked with violence that, in Rash’s telling, is graphic but never gratuitous.” from something rich and strange

SOMETHING RICH AND STRANGE Selected Stories

of a middle-class background. Maud, however, is near destitute.

Her meager inheritance covers little more than a room and the academy’s fees. She skimps on food to the extent that her hunger is noticed by the school’s regular model, Yvette. Also noting Maud’s obvious pride, the low-class Montmartre girl sends another student, Tanya, a rich, bright Russian, to intervene.

With the help of a charity, they get Maud employed by a French gentleman, Christian Morel, as a companion to his sickly sister, Sylvie. That the position seems too good to be true is explained away by Christian’s confession that Sylvie is an opium addict, a secret Maud guards as her own in exchange for being well fed and having the freedom to paint. Maud, Tanya and Yvette are such distinct, likable characters that if there were no more plot than their striving for their own livelihoods it would be a lovely novel. Luckily, for lovers of adventure, there is more.

The Morels are far more dangerous than they appear, and once the seeds of intrigue are planted, the scope of the book (and of Maud’s worldview) is expanded to encompass murderous plots, shady Parisian undersides, upper-class dealings, gems of history and gems—as in jewels. The women are heartwarming as friends and delightfully effective as crime fighters.

With a twisty, well-crafted plot, this novel is rich in historical detail and robust with personality.

Rash, Ron Ecco/HarperCollins (288 pp.) $27.99 | Nov. 4, 2014 978-0-06-234934-7 This selection of 34 stories from four collections signals the growing prominence of a fine author; the movie of his enthralling 2008 novel Serena is due this fall.

Rash’s writing is rooted in the mountains of North Carolina, the region’s history and folkways.These stories describe a hardscrabble landscape streaked with violence that, in Rash’s telling, is graphic but never gratuitous. Some are set in the present, others in the past, which should be respected and remembered. A visiting Briton’s ignorance of his family’s history results in his savage punishment (“A Servant of History”); a mercenary moocher trashes soldiers’ graves and also gets his comeuppance (“Dead Confederates”). The most powerful contemporary stories highlight the ravages of meth addiction. Further back in time, “Hard Times” glimpses lives broken by Depression-era poverty, while the Civil War–related stories have an almost crystalline quality. The mountains are predominantly for the Union; a young wife, alone on her farm, must battle a scavenging Confederate soldier (“Lincolnites”). Pity Ethan Burke in “The Dowry.” The war over, the young Union soldier hopes to marry the daughter of a Confederate colonel, who lost a hand on the battlefield. The colonel’s condition is that he receive a severed hand first. Even more haunting is the plight of two runaway slaves seeking shelter from a farmer maddened by grief over the loss of his son and wife (“Where the Map Ends”). He helps one slave on his way but detains the other; a rope hangs ready in the barn. Yet there’s light relief here too, from the antics of three dummies and one smart bear in the wilderness (“A Sort of Miracle”) to a memorable fish story (“Their Ancient, Glittering Eyes”).

These superbly suspenseful stories evoke a world of hurt, but what makes them so deeply satisfying is that they enlarge our capacity for empathy.

A CHRISTMAS PRAYER

Roby, Kimberla Lawson Grand Central Publishing (192 pp.) $20.00 | Oct. 28, 2014 978-1-4555-2604-8 Five years after her mother passed away, Alexis Fletcher is still plunged into grief every Christmas season.

Alexis would much rather take a few sleeping pills and fall into oblivion than decorate a tree. Despite her depression, she does as Rev. Black asks and writes a Christmas prayer pleading for happiness. It’s hard to muster much sympathy for Alexis, who practices a rather self-centered version of Christianity. Prayer becomes simply a series of “requests to God,” who apparently wants nothing more than for his children to be happy and financially stable. Indeed, Alexis suffers in the lap of luxury. She has a ridiculously high-paying job as a motivational speaker, which allows her to make her own hours, to travel, to take care of those she loves without batting an eye.

Saddled with an emotionally abusive slacker of a husband, her sister, Sabrina, is loath to ask for Alexis’ help. Alexis certainly has the financial means to pay their bills, but will her Christian faith be strong enough to turn the other cheek, letting bygones be bygones? Alexis’ fiance, Chase Dupont III, is a gorgeous and wealthy Prince Charming whom Rev. Black hand-selected for her. Chase’s mother, Geneva, hates Alexis, however, and plots to sabotage their engagement. Alexis spots Geneva’s tricks, but Chase is blind to them. How long before he will have to choose between his idyllic past and his future happiness? Roby’s (The Prodigal Son, 2014, etc.) latest romance in the best-selling

THE PARIS WINTER

Robertson, Imogen St. Martin’s (368 pp.) $25.99 | $12.99 e-book | Nov. 18, 2014 978-1-250-05183-7 978-1-4668-7231-8 e-book Three young women, joined by their independent spirits and love of art, become embroiled in a criminal plot in belle epoque Paris.

This rousing novel by Robertson (Circle of Shadows, 2013, etc.) starts calmly enough. Maud Heighton, a young Englishwoman in 1909, is a student at the Academie Lafond, an all-female painting school suitable for women |

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WHAT THE LADY WANTS

Reverend Curtis Black series is unfortunately marred by stilted, clunky phrasing (“She would feel sorry for Alexis for having to live in such a paltry manner”). The tale itself resembles “Cinderella” wandering into A Christmas Carol.

Fans will be happy to read Rev. Black’s further adventures, but this latest installment won’t win him any new ones.

Rosen, Renée New American Library (416 pp.) $15.00 paper | Nov. 4, 2014 978-0-451-46671-6

Rosen’s second paean to the Second City (after Dollface, 2013) is a fictional biography of the “Merchant Prince” Marshall Field, told from the point of view of his mistress.

Delia “Dell” Spencer, daughter of Franklin Spencer, one of Chicago’s wealthiest purveyors of dry goods, seems destined to love her father’s rival Marshall “Marsh” Field, founder of the iconic (and now defunct) department store that bore his name. The couple first meets at a ball celebrating the opening of Chicago’s equally iconic Palmer House, when Dell is 17 and Marsh, 37. That very night, the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 destroys the entire city, including Spencer’s and Field’s stores, the Spencer mansion and the Palmer House. By being the first to reopen, Marsh forever captures the hearts and wallets of Chicagoans. Five years later, Dell makes what her social set considers a sterling marriage to wealthy Arthur Caton. Dell hopes for more of her husband’s attention while gradually realizing the unmistakable (and at times not very convincing) appeal of Marsh, whose Prairie Avenue mansion’s backyard abuts the Caton abode. When Arthur sinks into depression and alcoholism after his best friend Paxton marries, Dell realizes that he prefers men, and she and Arthur enter into a threesome of sorts with Marsh. With Arthur’s consent Marshall and Dell conceive a child, but thanks to a push down a staircase from Marshall’s vindictive wife, Nannie, Dell loses both the child and her ability to have children. Dell evinces almost no internal conflict over her affair (love justifies all is her constant refrain), and her smug sense of entitlement belies the strong character with which the author is at great pains to imbue her. Efforts to paint Nannie as the villain backfire since Dell can garner no reader sympathy.

If Rosen’s intent was to portray Marshall Field in all his flawed complexity, it was not served by her choice of narrator.

THE BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY OF LITERARY FAILURE

Rose, C.D.—Ed. Melville House (128 pp.) $18.95 | Nov. 4, 2014 978-1-61219-378-6

Rose poses as the “editor” of this book, a series of clever (and occasionally hilarious) literary vignettes about authors whose careers never quite panned out owing to personal, cultural or artistic failings.

The novel has a distinctly Borges-ian feel to it, and Borges himself is referenced numerous times, both in the introduction and some of the 52 entries. We meet authors who will never, alas, be household names. In fact, Rose has a great deal of fun making up names for his putative literary failures. We meet Hermann von Abwarts, for example, who’s written a “frankly derivative” manuscript entitled The Sorrows of Young Hermann and who is beaten over the head with his work by illiterate thugs. Another author memorable for being unmemorable is Lord Frederick Rathole (pronounced “Rath-ole”), who designs an octagonal library with sides of differing lengths. Undeterred, Rathole “dismissed the builders, insisting his vision worked on a higher degree of non-Euclidean geometry.” Wendy Wenning is an author so ruthless in editing her work that she first removes all the adjectives (which she sees as “enemies”), then relative clauses and passive voice. As she keeps paring, she eventually gets to the final stage, and when she pushes the “print” button, discovers that what emerges is a blank sheet of paper. Similar to Wenning is Virgil Haack (a delightful pun), who, “convinced that less was certainly more,” puts a single word on the only page of his novel: the letter “I.” In presenting his failures, Rose makes highly literate and arcane references to a vast number of authors and literary theoreticians, and it’s great fun for the reader to become part of the game.

IT WILL END WITH US

Savage, Sam Coffee House (150 pp.) $12.95 paper | $9.99 e-book Nov. 11, 2014 978-1-56689-372-5 978-1-56689-380-0 e-book

First-person fiction in the guise of an impressionistic memoir by an older woman recalling her small-town girlhood.

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“Puzzling and ponderous but never predictable—very much in line with Self ’s trajectory thus far, in other words.” from shark

isolated by white space. It’s as if the paragraphs are snowflakes, each unique, yet creating a cumulative effect through accretion.

This is writing about writing, words about words, remembering through the distortions and inventions of memory. Many of the paragraphs, often many in a row, start with the words “I remember....” Others begin with “The time” and are often a series of sentence fragments, such as “The time Edward squeezed my head so hard it hurt.” Edward is one of the narrator’s two brothers, with whom she has lost all contact. Her other brother is Thornton—“And Thornton too without children, so it will end with us, probably.” Next paragraph, with rare continuity: “Which is for the best. I don’t see that we represent anything anymore.” The entirety of the novel takes place within the consciousness of the woman writing at her desk, much as she remembers that her mother once did. The reader senses that the mother went mad and wonders whether this is a reflection of the narrator’s projection: “Writing at the desk I sometimes get the feeling that I am my mother....I have no idea what the sentence I just wrote means.” Almost as an aside, she writes, without any explanation, that “having become thoroughly estranged from my parents by the time they died I am estranged from their ghosts as well.”

This is not a novel for anyone who expects time to move in a straightforward fashion or for memories to cohere or for beginnings and endings to be other than arbitrary.

she’s working, the 75 cases she’d rather not work, the unofficial case Aunt Barb has handed her and the domestic drama all these complications are bound to stir up? By kicking major butt in a typically unconvincing third act, that’s how.

But exemplary first and second acts are enough to make this the most successful melding to date of Rosato & DiNunzio’s cases and Scottoline’s family-centered standalones (Keep Quiet, 2014, etc.).

SHARK

Self, Will Grove (480 pp.) $26.00 | Nov. 4, 2014 978-0-8021-2310-7 A hallucinatory, maddening, difficult novel by the shape-shifting Self (Umbrella, 2013, etc.), who dons his best Pynchonesque finery.

It’s not a screaming that comes across the sky, not exactly, but instead a chunking guitar that herald’s Self ’s opening: “owowwow-owww! the clawed chord howls in the hallway and tears up the stairs.” It’s the tail end of the 1960s, the day four kids are being shot down in Ohio, and over in tony London, a psychiatrist, for reasons that are not entirely clear, decides to test the therapeutic possibilities of lysergic acid on his own bad self. Time slips away, and so do the niceties of syntax, until some hundreds of pages later he begins to latch hold of his trip: “Lost in the curdled depths of the Labrador’s mildbrown eyes, Zack isn’t shocked by this hallucination, instead rather admires the dog’s American accent.” But more is afoot than just a lava-lamp swirl: During the proceedings, truths are unfolding about the century past in the jagged confessions of two haunted residents, one a survivor of the shark-doomed Indianapolis, which before sinking had carried the atomic bomb across the Pacific to the waiting Enola Gay, the other a witness to the obliteration of Hiroshima. The clash of “disabled exservicemen” and “bloody hippies” is obvious, as is the presence, perhaps real and perhaps imagined, of a malevolent German (“[v]ery gutt patientz, the Kraut soothes, ve-ery nize patientz”), but the whole enterprise collapses in a meltdown of ellipses and em dashes until we’re not quite sure where we are in the proceedings. Self ’s presentation is too clever by half, and though undeniably artful, it’s a chore for readers: The book seems destined for cult status, to be sure, but it’s hard to imagine even the most die-hard of Gravity’s Rainbow fans warming up to this one.

Puzzling and ponderous but never predictable—very much in line with Self’s trajectory thus far, in other words.

(Agent: Andrew Wylie)

BETRAYED

Scottoline, Lisa St. Martin’s (368 pp.) $27.99 | $14.99 e-book | Nov. 25, 2014 978-1-250-02770-2 978-1-250-02768-9 e-book It’s associate Judy Carrier’s turn to feel the heat at Rosato & DiNunzio, Philadelphia’s premier all-female law firm. And girl, does she ever.

Founding partner Bennie Rosato thinks she’s doing Judy a favor by giving her a chance—that is, requiring her—to hammer out settlements for 75 asbestosliability cases. It’s exactly the sort of work that could establish her as a rainmaker and pave the way for her to become a partner. That’s not quite how Judy sees it. She doesn’t want to argue down the worth of each individual life lost to mesothelioma.

More important, she’s already got her hands full with Linda Adler’s sex discrimination suit against PennBank when a bigger bombshell lands: Her beloved Aunt Barb is about to go under the knife for breast cancer. As usual with Scottoline (Accused, 2013, etc.), it gets worse. Hours after meeting the illegal Mexican immigrant Barb Moyer describes as her best friend, Judy gets a call telling her that Rita Lopez—or, as Aunt Barb knew her, Iris Juarez—has been found dead behind the wheel of her car. The East Grove police and the coroner’s office say she died of natural causes. Judy doesn’t think so, especially once Father Keegan, the pastor of Iris’ church, is killed in a convenient hitand-run accident. How can Judy juggle the demands of the case |

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DEMIGODS ON SPEEDWAY

Vishnu and Ganesha, who also figure prominently in the narrative. The young man who drives the story is struggling with his body, his mind, his sexuality and his self-esteem. Unfortunately, Shraya is often imprecise. One of the narrator’s friends is dubbed “The Only Other Gay.” Eventually, the young man meets “She,” a girl with whom he almost accidentally starts a relationship. Studded with early 1990s pop-culture references, the novel sets the narrator’s confusion in a time before the rigid bonds of gender identification finally started to yield (somewhat). In the background, the myths of the Hindu gods play out as a kind of chorus, as the humanized deities love and struggle and desire even as the narrator acts out his own confused journey. It’s interesting that he finds the underground world of gay culture nearly as confusing, rigid and arcane as the straight world. Upon telling friends about his relationship with “She,” they promptly recoil. This prompts a realization: “It occurred to him that the gays and the straights had more in common than he had considered before,” Shraya writes. “Just like the straights, the gays were intent on preserving and presenting a uniform, singular version of themselves; in this case, their gayness.” Sure, it’s a messy, experimental work, but props to Shraya for putting himself out there in such a daring way and speaking truth to power to readers all along the sexual spectrum.

An experimental multimedia hymn about delving into one’s self, seeking love without labels.

Sheehan, Aurelie Univ. of Arizona (160 pp.) $16.95 paper | Nov. 13, 2014 978-0-8165-3110-3

A collection of interrelated stories, set in Arizona, that aspires to a mythic resonance.

Sheehan (Jewelry Box: A Collection of Histories, 2013, etc.) sets her fiction in Tucson (with the occasional glimpse toward Phoenix), where all of these stories and the characters within them seem like “part of a larger order,” though each also stands on its own. Sometimes it’s nothing more than the title—the opening “Olympus Falls,” the closing “Cerberus,” the pivotal “The Lotus Eaters”—that most strongly reinforces the mythic association. The first story introduces the reader to Zero, a man who, like a developer (or a god), “creates something from nothing, wealth from scratch.” He’s one of the few characters of means in a collection where the marginalized dominate. His wife has cancer, and he has an obsessive lust for a younger woman with “[a]n ass of mythological proportions.” In subsequent stories, that woman will become his mistress and even meet his wife, while the insatiable Zero will also commit something between a seduction and a sexual assault on his son’s first real girlfriend. Zero and his demimonde are nowhere to be found in other tales featuring minimum-wage restaurant workers, petty thieves at a car wash and a sorority girl experiencing her initiation into political activism. Geography and climate provide the common denominator: “[I]n Tucson, the sun is commander....The sun is everywhere, in every nook and cranny, and there is no nook or cranny left cool or dim.” It’s a land of “the lascivious heat of spring” and where, too often, “marriage is but a mirage on the horizon.”

The writer’s reach seems to exceed her grasp in stories that allude to more than actually happens.

QUARTET FOR THE END OF TIME

Skibsrud, Johanna Norton (384 pp.) $26.95 | Oct. 6, 2014 978-0-393-07373-7

Skibsrud’s elegant, intricately woven second novel (The Sentimentalists, 2011) is inspired by Messiaen’s experimental composition Quartet for the End of Time, a musical piece that sought to escape the restrictions of conventional measurements of time.

Attempting to mimic Messiaen’s structure, Skibsrud jumps into different perspectives and time periods to trace the repercussions of a single event. The book begins in 1932 with a group of down-on-their-luck World War I veterans camped out in Washington, D.C., to demand the immediate cash fulfillment of their bonus certificates, which weren’t due to mature until 1945. A young, idealistic judge’s son, Alden Kelly, finds himself sympathetic to the cause of the Bonus Army though his father vehemently disagrees with him. He falls under the sway of a Communist leader who asks him to carry an explosive device for a shadowy purpose, but before the bomb can reach its intended destination, Alden gets caught in the swell of a riot and has his bag confiscated by the police. In the ensuing investigation, the judge arranges for Alden’s sister, Sutton, to point the finger at Kansas veteran Arthur Sinclair, who disappears after being taken into custody. The repercussions of this action ripple through the rest of the book as Skibsrud traces the lives

SHE OF THE MOUNTAINS

Shraya, Vivek Illus. by Biesinger, Raymond Arsenal Pulp Press (128 pp.) $18.95 paper | $10.99 e-book Oct. 14, 2014 978-1-55152-560-0 978-1-55152-561-7 e-book

A young man explores his sexuality while the Hindu gods play out their long drama throughout his life.

Getting it on isn’t easy for the most grounded of young people, let alone a gender-conflicted queer boy growing up in the wilds of Canada at a time when “You’re gay!” was hurled as the most hurtful of insults. Composed by multihyphenate pop star Shraya (God Loves Hair, 2011), this fable is punctuated

by Biesinger’s lurid illustrations of Hindu deities like Pavarti, 44

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CITIZENS CREEK

of Sutton, Alden, and Arthur’s son, Douglas, through the Great Depression, World War II and beyond, long after the bonus tickets are paid out thanks to Congressional approval.

Though Skibsrud’s pacing sometimes bogs down, her unique voice and eye for historical detail lend the book a satisfying richness.

Tademy, Lalita Atria (432 pp.) $26.00 | Nov. 4, 2014 978-1-4767-5303-4

In her third novel, Tademy (Red River, 2007, etc.) draws a tale of courage and family loyalty from a dark corner of American history.

The young slave Tom is yatika— interpreter—for Alabama Creek chief Yargee, but he’s called Cow Tom for his gift of understanding, hilis haya, of cattle. As the Remove begins—Southern tribes being exiled to Indian Territory—Yargee rents Cow Tom to Gen. Thomas Jesup as a “linguister” to fight the Second Seminole War. War over, Cow Tom, his wife, Amy, and daughters Malinda and Maggie are caught up in a desperate river journey to Fort Gibson in eastern Oklahoma. Cow Tom’s hard bargaining earns the family’s freedom, but it’s a long, hard struggle with prejudice before those with African-American blood are allowed into tribal roles. Tademy’s research lends veracity to the tale, which later shifts to the perspective of Rose, Cow Tom’s granddaughter. Prospering until the Civil War, the family is driven from their land by Confederate Lower Creeks.

There’s only spare protection at Fort Gibson—“Surrounded by sickness and starvation and suffering.” Recognizing “[t]he world was a harsh place, guaranteed of quicksilver change and backhand slaps,” Cow Tom builds a new homestead and prospers, taking a role as chief among African Creeks. Rose marries a half-Indian cowboy and begins to ranch, struggling against her husband’s fickle regard for his vows and raising two of his children with other women as her own. Rose and Cow Tom drive the intense narrative, with Tademy’s knowledge of Creek life, from turban headgear to corn sofki to fermented cha-cha, offering authenticity. Tademy’s tale remains intense throughout, from the genocidal war in Florida—Tom, “not yet thirty, his life an endless trail of death patrols”—to the desperate struggle to hold onto property against prejudice—“We are Negro, and we are Creek, not one or the other but both.”

Tamedy explores a forgotten trail of American history to find an intriguing tale of love, family and perseverance in the struggles of proud African Creeks.

ALL DAYS ARE NIGHT

Stamm, Peter Translated by Hofmann, Michael Other Press (141 pp.) $22.00 | Nov. 4, 2014 978-1-59051-696-6 A slim novel filled with big ideas about art and identity.

The Swiss author’s bloodless minimalism works better in his elliptical short stories (We’re Flying, 2012, etc.) than it does in longer work, where even a short novel can feel ponderous with its lack of narrative momentum. The plot points here are few, though to reveal their progression might spoil the reader’s discovery. Much of the book takes place inside the head of Gillian, who is initially immobile in a hospital, wondering how she got there. A car accident has left her face unrecognizably disfigured and her husband, the drunken driver, dead. An aspiring actress who instead became a television journalist—which she considers a different sort of acting—Gillian had made a living and found an identity with her face. So who is she now? “It was conceivable that one day there would be a person with a different face, who would be her. But there was as little connecting her to that person as to the other one she had been before the accident.” As the novel plays with chronology, much of the first section features pre-accident flashbacks—to the marriage that had become both tense and routine, to her TV show, and in particular to an interview with an artist who made paintings from photos he took of a wide variety of women who posed naked for him. Later, “[h]e saw the possibilities of [Gillian’s] face, not so much its beauty as its variety, the many faces that were contained in it.” By this point, the novel has shifted its perspective to inside the artist’s consciousness. It’s six years later, and Gillian has a new face, a new career, a new name. Way too coincidentally, the two have reconnected. Way too portentously, she asks him, “That’s a frightening thought, isn’t it, that you’re capable of killing someone with your art.”

The novel somehow ends on a note of redemption but without resolution.

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BURYING WATER

in the Seattle hospital listening to machines pump life in and out of his wife.” Patrick needed money. He found it trafficking drugs. Waite’s early pages have a bit of repetition—it’s repeated that Bobby owes his job to Gary, Patrick’s former deputy who’s now sheriff. That stumble behind, Waite’s tale turns bloody, dark and mean. Driscoll, an obsessed DEA agent, remains certain Patrick secreted thousands of dollars before his arrest. In this Inspector Javert–Jean Valjean narrative thread, Driscoll is sure Patrick killed two drug dealers to get the money. Family neglected, bosses ignored, Driscoll’s a character totally realistic in his obsession. Another powerful character is Morgan Drake, Bobby’s hermit grandfather, loyalty honed down sharp, an emblem of all that’s right and true about the West’s rugged individualist paradigm. The wolf ’s counterparts are Bean and John Wesley, Patrick’s former prison mates. The pair protected vulnerable Patrick in prison. Now they’ve killed a guard, escaped, and are marauding murderously in pursuit of Patrick—and the secreted cash—expecting to lure him by kidnapping Bobby and his wife. With a gift for descriptive language, Waite shows superb familiarity with Washington’s dualities—the lush, green western slope and the great, flat wind-swept east, every inch of wild nature a metaphor reinforcing his theme.

A tale of greed and violence and loyalty and of fathers and sons who communicate in silences, “fearful of what response might come, of what truths might be revealed.”

Tucker, K.A. Atria (368 pp.) $15.00 paper | Oct. 7, 2014 978-1-4767-7418-3 Beaten, raped, left for dead—a young woman slowly repairs her body, but her mind refuses to tell her the awful truth of what really happened.

The woman was found in an isolated field by Jesse Welles, a prodigiously talented car mechanic. The local doctor and sheriff understandably take an interest in the case, but they’re also Jesse’s parents and are strangely eager to keep him away from her. Even aside from finding the woman in the field, Jesse’s the kind of guy who stops in a storm to help a woman stranded on the side of the road, and she rewards him with a powerful kiss. She’s out of his league, so Jesse is startled to see her again at a nightclub, where the powerful Viktor Petrova makes him a deal that’s hard to resist: Rebuild Viktor’s Aston Martin DB5 in exchange for Jesse’s dream car, a ’69 Barracuda. Viktor’s business dealings are probably illegal, and his abused wife looks a lot like the mysterious woman who kissed Jesse. Nonetheless, Jesse finds himself at the Petrovas’ house every day, getting to know Viktor’s wife very well indeed. Meanwhile, Jesse’s mother cares for the anonymous woman. Balking at the label “Jane Doe,” which only emphasizes her ghost of an existence, she chooses a new name based on a small tattoo balanced on her hip: Water. With the help of Jesse’s mother, she finds a home with Ginny Fitzgerald.

The woman, her memories, her emotional wreckage—all, like water, must inevitably surface. As Water does rise, she finds herself increasingly wondering about Jesse. Why is he so skittish around her? Why is she so drawn to him? Tucker (Five Ways to Fall, 2014, etc.) deftly steers the damsel-in-(serious, nearly fatal, possibly mob-related)-distress-rescued-by-a-knight-in-shiningarmor storyline, making these star-crossed lovers compelling.

A sexy, romantic, gangster-tinged page-turner.

HOUSE OF COATES

Zellar, Brad Photos by Soth, Alec Coffee House (140 pp.) $20.00 paper | Oct. 14, 2014 978-1-56689-370-1 A lonely traveler on the edge of civilization documents the empty and desolate corners of America where no one is looking.

In the classic Cannery Row, Steinbeck describes his characters as “whores, pimps, gamblers and sons of bitches,” which he says could just as easily mean “saints and angels and martyrs and holy men.” This multimedia experiment, originally published as a spiral-bound art project by Little Brown Mushroom, attempts to capture moments in the life of a similar creature, starting with a hymn to his tribe. “Here’s to the prisoners of disenchantment, the lost, broken men bullied and inoculated against hope as children and eventually immunized against all notice or attention,” Zellar writes. “To the lost boys and invisible men. To those who have been carved small by the glaciers of time and memory. To the fundamentally amnesiac, nurturers of the selective oblivion of the neglected. To the men who keep secrets even from themselves. To the ceaselessly retreating armies of the lonely. To the men who play hide and seek.” The book posits itself as a record of the viewpoint of one Lester B. Morrison, a lost soul who lives on the outskirts of Minneapolis, taking snapshots of seemingly random objects: the outside of a rural casino; an overturned semi; a church in the snow. There’s

SOMETIMES THE WOLF

Waite, Urban William Morrow (352 pp.) $26.99 | $14.99 e-book | Oct. 21, 2014 978-0-06-221691-5 978-0-06-221693-9 e-book Wild things haunt the Northern Cascades’ evergreen slopes and valleys in Waite’s (The Carrion Birds, 2013, etc.) third novel. Those most feral walk on two legs.

In the symbolic opening, Deputy Bobby Drake calls in a sighting: a deer is fence-stranded, with a lone wolf, out of place in the Cascades, scavenging its carcass. Bobby’s heading for the state prison to meet his father upon his release. Former Silver Lake sheriff Patrick Drake made bad choices after “he’d sat 46

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a storyline but it’s nearly inconsequential to the presentation of the story, a poetic attempt not to fully form a life but only to capture moments of memory and objects of counterintuitive beauty. There’s a mild debate over whether Lester B. Morrison is real or not, dead or not, fiction or fact, but it’s a moot point.

In the framework of this delicately curated art project, Lester becomes Schrodinger’s cat, alive or dead, merely occupying a moment in time. The prose is crisp and thoughtful and wellmatched to the photos that show the side of America to which even most Americans never give a second thought.

Snapshots taken by one of the world’s beautiful losers.

THE CORPSE WITH THE PLATINUM HAIR

Ace, Cathy TouchWood Editions (240 pp.) $14.95 paper | Oct. 14, 2014 978-1-77151-087-5 A Welsh/Canadian psychologist gets to practice her craft at a Vegas birthday party gone bad.

All the guests for Miss Shirley Petrosian’s party at the top of the Tsar! Casino and Hotel have been hand-selected and carefully vetted for security purposes. In fact, criminologist Cait Morgan and her very significant other, retired detective Bud Anderson, barely squeak in. Between midnight and dessert, Cait’s in the ladies’ room when she hears a loud metallic sound, and a blackout sends the guests into panic. When the auxiliary lights come on, Miss Shirley is skewered to her chair by a Russian saber, putting an end to future birthdays. The guests soon learn that in addition to dying so gruesomely, Miss Shirley had inconsiderately kept the secret of her new security code to herself. So for 12 hours, they’re all locked in a private dining room at the top of a giant Faberge-style egg with a killer in their midst. Bud tries to calm the guests, and Cait calls on her people-reading skills and her eidetic memory when she invites them to tell their life stories.

As the guests—the victim’s stepson, the chef and his girlfriend, a husband-and-wife lawyer team, a businessman, an opera diva and her assistant, a bartender and an elderly retainer—reveal their characters, they also form a picture of the autocratic, capricious but generous deceased. Two missing pocketbooks and a small golden egg, a squabble over Miss Shirley’s will and a revelation about her past foment more tension and panic, especially given the possibility that only the killer will get out alive.

Although Cait is a center of sanity and reason in her fourth outing, this contrived tale is trite in concept, slow in exposition and incomplete in resolution—unless Ace (The Corpse With the Emerald Thumb, 2014, etc.) is reserving a key piece of the mystery for the next installment.

THE BOY WHO KILLED DEMONS

Zeltserman, Dave Overlook (304 pp.) $25.95 | Oct. 16, 2014 978-1-4683-0960-7

Humor outweighs the horror in this amusing look at a 15-year-old saving the world.

Henry Dudlow is a typical uppermiddle-class teenager. His father is a lawyer, his mother’s a marketing executive, and they live a very comfortable life in Waban, Massachusetts, where “you don’t find too many kids shoveling snow or mowing lawns to earn money.” That was BSD, or Before Seeing Demons. Where most people see normal humans, Henry sees “flaming red skin, yellow eyes, horns, grotesque faces with twisted misshapen noses” all around him. He becomes obsessed with learning the demons’ wicked ways, teaching himself German and Italian to read medieval texts and conducting experiments to track them at various places around Boston. Enter Sally Freeman, a first crush from grade school who moves to Henry’s high school and fans the flames of adolescence to high heat. Henry is now obsessed with both Sally and the demons he’s hunting. Children nearing their fourth birthdays go missing, and Henry makes the connection to a gruesome find in a warehouse in Brooklyn where 39 kids were found caged in some unspeakable ritual. The pattern is repeating in Boston. Henry embraces his calling, drops Sally—temporarily—and commits to saving the children and the world from the gates of hell. The story is told in the form of Henry’s journal, where he keeps a record in case he doesn’t survive. Zeltserman manages the voice of a teenager deftly, and the adolescent angst rings true. The demons are almost background to a tale about growing up.

Zeltserman has written an entertaining novel but not one that will keep you from turning off the lights.

JANE AND THE TWELVE DAYS OF CHRISTMAS Being A Jane Austen Mystery Barron, Stephanie Soho Crime (200 pp.) $25.00 | Oct. 28, 2014 978-1-61695-423-9

Treason, murder and a whiff of international intrigue add spice to the Austen family holidays in the 11th book of Barron’s series. |

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What promises to be a dismal Christmas season for Jane Austen and her pinchpenny clergyman brother James brightens considerably with her invitation to The Vyne, an elegant old house with a long history. Its current owners, William and Eliza Chute, are the genial hosts of a large house party that’s a welcome escape from the home of James and his hypochondriac wife. Jane, her beloved sister, Cassandra, and their mother much prefer to make merry with the other guests, including Raphael West, son of the well-known Philadelphia painter. Raphael, who’s already encountered Jane and her party in a roadway accident, has no pretensions to the skills of his father. But he likes to sketch everything he sees, and his eye for detail is as keen as Jane’s powers of observation, all of which come into play when a young naval lieutenant who’s come to The Vyne on urgent government business dies of a broken neck nearby. Missing from his dispatch bag is a highly important document that could affect the future of Europe and America. A second death, a drawing of a naked woman on a cross, a secret passage and a small bottle are the disparate clues that Jane, with help from the dashing, enigmatic Raphael, uses to find the killer who has so tastelessly intruded upon the holiday season. The informed reader will find any number of allusions to the actual novels of Jane, who might be surprised to find how she’s prospered as a detective.

Barron ( Jane and the Canterbury Tale, 2011, etc.) has clearly done her homework in the language and manners of Austen’s time. Even though she’s no match for her literary idol and her pacing is leisurely at best, her latest venture edges out competing authors of Regency whodunits.

gangster maintaining control of his enterprise and a slow-witted laborer who takes a vicious beating over a card game, and you have a recipe for classic pulp fiction.

An old-style detective story bursting with mystery.

DEAD FOR A SPELL

Buckland, Raymond Berkley Prime Crime (304 pp.) $15.00 paper | Oct. 7, 2014 978-0-425-26803-2 Bram Stoker’s personal assistant helps solve two ritualistic murders and races to prevent a third in this Victorian tale combining real-life actors and fictional characters.

When Harry Rivers, the 22-year-old stage manager of London’s Lyceum Theatre, learns that the young actress Nell Burton is missing, he first tells Nell’s beau not to worry. But a visit to the owner of Nell’s boardinghouse and an ominous reading of another bit player’s tarot cards are anything but reassuring. Although Harry is skeptical about the cards, his boss, theater manager Abraham Stoker, takes them more seriously, since the author of Dracula has a keen interest in any matters beyond the everyday. Inspector Samuel Charles Bellamy of Scotland Yard, not noted for his imagination or intellectual prowess, dismisses Nell’s disappearance as no cause for alarm until Harry and Stoker find strange chalk drawings, a bloodstain and Nell’s body in an old riverside warehouse. At first, Henry Irving, the Lyceum’s lead actor, is a suspect because one of his knives was apparently the murder weapon. But Harry’s extensive travel and research, with some selective support from the dignified and erudite Stoker, extends the investigation to an earlier murder, a book of magic, a rival theater, a secret organization called the Hellfire Club—and a threat to someone very close to Harry.

Readers hoping for a glimpse behind the scenes of the Lyceum won’t get much in Buckland’s (Cursed in the Act, 2014) second Bram Stoker adventure. Nor will they see much of Stoker. The spotlight is deservedly on Harry, who does all the legwork and spends more time on the road than backstage.

EASY DEATH

Boyd, Daniel Hard Case Crime (240 pp.) $9.95 paper | Nov. 11, 2014 978-0-85768-579-7 Cops and crooks scramble to recover money from an armored truck robbery.

A former police chief from central Ohio, Boyd (‘Nada, 2010) delivers a noir novel about an armored truck heist in an unnamed Northeastern town during the days leading up to Christmas 1951.

Inside a number of converging narratives, criminals, ne’er-dowells, park rangers, police detectives and petty gamblers congregate to create a tale filled with intrigue. At the behest of a local crime boss, Walter and Eddie successfully pilfer the loot only to have the enigmatic Officer Drapp hot on the trail of the money. When the tracks lead through a national park, he meets up with broad-shouldered park ranger Callie Nixon, who’s driven to show that a woman can ranger just as well as a man. As this odd couple pushes deeper into the snowy forest, all is not as it seems, and a series of questions emerges. Why does Drapp not call for backup? What’s the deal with Callie’s boss, a shadowy park ranger captain? And, perhaps most important, who’s shooting at Callie and Drapp from the lookout tower? Combine gunplay in the icy wilderness with the troubles of a small-time 48

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THE FOURTH BETRAYAL

Burrows, Bruce TouchWood Editions (240 pp.) $14.95 paper | Oct. 14, 2014 978-1-77151-096-7

A fisherman from the Canadian Northwest puts himself at risk when he tries to find his missing best friend.

Ollie Swanson and Doug Tarkenen grew up together in Sointula, a Finnish logging and fishing village on an island off Vancouver. Both more or less raised by the whole village, |

“McCusker digs up plenty of suspects in the murder, but the most promising have alibis, and the others don’t pan out.” from down on cyprus avenue

Unevenly paced but continuously absorbing, with a nice rapport between the hero and heroine even though they clearly aren’t destined to share a romantic relationship.

both injured in accidents, they don’t have very ambitious plans for entering the world at large until a well-conceived swindle sets them up for college, and life, if they don’t squander the proceeds. Ollie drops out, buys a shrimp dredger from a Japanese fisherman, marries the fisherman’s daughter and raises two sons. Doug follows his dream of being an investigative reporter and is busy making a name for himself at the Ottawa Times when he takes a three-month leave of absence. His jeep and overturned canoe are found at one of a series of connected lakes, but there’s no sign of him. When Ollie goes east in search of his friend, he finds among Doug’s possessions incriminating tapes of interviews with Gerry Steadman, a rich patron of the Conservative Party. Ollie is certain the tapes have something to do with Doug’s disappearance and with a committee he was apparently infiltrating on the trail of very big story. Irrefutable proof that his friend is dead pushes Ollie to follow up on the story, which leads him into a tangle of political corruption and corporate greed. Doug’s final dramatic act in life shows Ollie how to avenge his death in an offbeat thriller that shuttles from coast to coast and from past to present.

Burrows (The River Killers, 2011) provides a strong political agenda, a dry wit and a couple of antiheroes who evolve into men of determined integrity.

THE CINDERELLA MURDER

Clark, Mary Higgins; Burke, Alafair Simon & Schuster (352 pp.) $26.99 | $10.99 e-book | Nov. 18, 2014 978-1-4767-6312-5 978-1-4767-6370-5 e-book The team behind Clark’s reality TV show Under Suspicion (I’ve Got You Under My Skin, 2014) returns to dramatize—all right, solve—another cold case, with welcome help from co-author Burke (All Day

and a Night, 2014, etc.).

Rosemary Dempsey has always hated the references to her daughter, Susan, as Cinderella ever since Susan was found

DOWN ON CYPRUS AVENUE

Charles, Paul Dufour (320 pp.) $29.00 | Nov. 4, 2014 978-0-8023-1358-4

The creator of DI Christy Kennedy (A Pleasure to Do Death with You, 2012, etc.) auditions a new police hero who isn’t really a police officer at all.

DI Brendy McCusker retired from the Portrush constabulary only to have his wife, Anna Stringer, run off with his nest egg and leave him behind. So now a temp agency has sent him to Belfast, where he’s helping DI Lily O’Carroll and correcting everyone who calls him inspector. There are a lot of people to correct because McCusker’s involved with two different cases. The first involves the disappearance of two 20-something brothers, Lawrence and Ryan O’Neill, whose mother, Polly, is certain they’ve been kidnapped and whose stepfather, James, is equally certain that O’Carroll and McCusker are trespassing in his home and need to leave. Not even a ransom demand changes James’ mind, but it does get Polly to press him (never mind how) to plunk down £999,950 for the safe return of the brothers. In the meantime, McCusker’s been saddled with a second case: the savage stabbing of Adam Whitlock, a young American solicitor who’s been working for the law firm long associated with his wealthy father, Wesley Whitlock III. McCusker digs up plenty of suspects in the murder, but the most promising have alibis, and the others don’t pan out. Eventually he’s nagged by his memories of the O’Neill kidnapping, as most readers will be too, and unearths an audaciously inventive connection between the two crimes. |

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in Laurel Canyon Park the morning after her father’s 60th birthday party, a party she passed up for an audition with indie director Frank Parker. Susan made it to within half a mile of Parker’s home before she was strangled after losing a shoe, presumably in a futile attempt to outrace her killer.

Now that producer Laurie Moran and the rest of the Under Suspicion crew wants to film a series of interviews about the 20-year-old murder, Rosemary sees the TV show as an opportunity to restore Susan’s individual identity to the figure of a Cinderella who’d left a shoe behind. Susan’s other intimates aren’t so eager to participate. Parker, coming off an Oscar nomination, doesn’t need the publicity. Susan’s old boyfriend, character actor Keith Ratner, has never been very cooperative. Her former UCLA roommates, Madison Meyer and Nicole Melling, have their own secrets to hide. So does her college friend Dwight Cook, who was vaulted into the ranks of Silicon Valley royalty while he was still sitting in professor Richard Hathaway’s computer science class with Susan. It’s up to Laurie and Alex Buckley, the resident lawyer of Under Suspicion who loves her, to figure out why the necklace Susan was wearing the night she died was so much more important than her shoe.

The continuing sleuth easily substitutes for Clark’s interchangeable damsels in distress, and Burke brings a sharp legal eye to the proceedings. This serendipitous series launch, or continuation, will satisfy Clark’s legion of fans and may well win her some new ones.

though her irresponsibility forces him to take Jeremy into his care. But it’s his younger brother who cracks the code of the long-dead murder victim’s secret diary and an attractive neighbor, Lila Nash, who has her own agenda for helping Joe solve the mystery, whatever the risk.

Eskens’ debut is a solid and thoughtful tale of a young man used to taking on burdens beyond his years—none more dangerous than championing a bitter old man convicted of a horrific crime.

SCANDAL IN THE SECRET CITY

Fanning, Diane Severn House (256 pp.) $28.95 | Nov. 1, 2014 978-0-7278-8404-6

A bright young woman fights sexism and government red tape to solve a murder during World War II. Bryn Mawr graduate in chemistry and physics Libby Clark, desperate to get a job helping in the war effort, finds that jobs for women are few. In Detroit for the April 1943 meeting of the American Chemical Society, she’s offered a job by Eastman Kodak that’s shrouded in secrecy. After an orientation in Rochester, she follows a circuitous route to the secret city of Oak Ridge, Tennessee. There, she’s housed in a dorm with many other young women, none of them scientists. Libby soon becomes friends with her roommate, Ruthie, a Tennessee girl who shows up on Christmas Day with her flighty sister Irene and a bottle of Jack Daniels. The next morning, Ruthie bursts in to tell the hung-over Libby that Irene never came home.

Together, they find her strangled at the football field. Abruptly sent home, Ruthie begs Libby to investigate. She’s threatened and stonewalled by the Army, and her job hangs by a thread, but she refuses to give up. Only her brilliance at her job, which involves purifying uranium, keeps her there. To solve the mystery, Libby enlists the help of several of her fellow scientists.

Although some of them are opposed to women working, they follow the scientific method in an effort to discover which of the many men Irene dated had a motive for murder.

An intriguing change from Fanning’s Lucinda Pierce series (Chain Reaction, 2014, etc.) bolstered by thought-provoking details of the obstacles women faced in the wartime workforce.

THE LIFE WE BURY

Eskens, Allen Seventh Street/Prometheus (300 pp.) $17.00 paper | $11.99 e-book Oct. 14, 2014 978-1-61614-998-7 978-1-61614-999-4 e-book A struggling student’s English assignment turns into a mission to solve a 30-year-old murder.

Joe Talbert has had very few breaks in his 21 years. The son of a single and very alcoholic mother, he’s worked hard to save enough money to leave his home in Austin, Minnesota, for the University of Minnesota. Although he has to leave his autistic younger brother, Jeremy Naylor, to the dubious care of their mother, Joe is determined to beat the odds and get his degree. For an assignment in his English class, he decides to interview Carl Iverson, a man convicted of raping and killing a 14-year-old girl. Carl, who maintains his innocence, is dying of cancer and has been released to a nursing home to end his life in lonely but unrepentant pain. The more Joe learns about Carl—a Vietnam vet with two Purple Hearts and a Silver Cross—the more the young man questions the conviction. Joe’s plan to write a short biography and earn an easy A turns into something more. Even after his mother is arrested for drunk driving and guilt-trips Joe into ransacking his college fund to bail her out, he soldiers on with the project, 50

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“The human vermin who infest Bangkok inch ever closer to travel writer Poke Rafferty’s growing family.” from for the dead

THE LAWS OF MURDER

trouble is that the phone contains photos of two cops who have very recently turned up dead, and somebody wants the phone and its virtual contents back badly enough to threaten Miaow, Andrew and Andrew’s whole family. Rafferty would be the obvious person to turn to if Miaow weren’t so hurt by learning that her adoptive mother, Rose, a former Patpong dancer her father rescued and married (The Fear Artist, 2012, etc.), has just become pregnant, and neither of her parents saw fit to tell her the news themselves. Juggling his latest domestic crisis as he works with Lt. Col. Arthit, his friend on the force, Rafferty connects the mystery of the dead police to a conspiracy that’s been festering for years. Although the master puppeteer who’s been pulling the strings seems to appear out of nowhere with suspiciously convenient timing, Rafferty’s climactic confrontation with him will satisfy readers’ most self-righteous desires for revenge even as it promises a rare moment of equipoise for this rewarding franchise.

“You can’t live for the dead,” Rafferty keeps getting reminded. His latest adventure is a compelling demonstration of just how untrue that is and a stirring account of his strenuous attempts to live for the living.

Finch, Charles Minotaur (304 pp.) $25.99 | $12.99 e-book | Nov. 11, 2014 978-1-250-05130-1 978-1-4668-5788-9 e-book A Victorian private investigator teams up with Scotland Yard to solve a case that involves one of their own.

Charles Lenox has given up his seat in Parliament to return to his first love: solving crimes. He’s entered into an agreement to run a new detective agency with his protégé, Lord John Dallington; wellborn widow Polly Buchanan, who’s already been associated with a successful agency; and the Frenchman LeMaire. Their new enterprise has been greeted by some surprising newspaper criticism they attribute to Lenox’s friend Inspector Jenkins. Lenox in particular is getting no clients. Despite the cold shoulder from Scotland Yard, Lenox immediately agrees to help when Inspector Nicholson calls to tell him that Jenkins has been murdered. The inspector was found shot in front of a house just a few doors from the home of the Marquess of Wakefield, a man Lenox is sure is guilty of a number of crimes. Now Wakefield has vanished. The detectives think he’s on the run until they find his body, poisoned with lead added to some expensive port and hidden in a salt-filled trunk in the hold of a ship about to sail for India. The label on the shipping crate carries the name of a man they cannot find despite every effort. Unhappy with the partnership, LeMaire leaves, and Polly’s tempted by a lucrative offer to run her own agency. With the loyal Dallington at his side, Lenox continues to explore every avenue. And, once Wakefield is taken out of the running as the criminal mastermind, Lenox must discover who is running the show while trying to save his failing agency.

Finch’s clever hero (An Old Betrayal, 2013, etc.) overcomes despair and calumny to solve one of his author’s thorniest puzzles.

THE OLD DEEP AND DARK

Hart, Ellen Minotaur (304 pp.) $25.99 | $12.99 e-book | Oct. 7, 2014 978-1-250-04769-4 978-1-250-04780-9 e-book Two old friends work together to make connections between a historic mystery emerging from a theater renovation and a modern-day murder.

“The Old Deep and Dark” is the nickname of the newly christened Thorn Lester Playhouse, which wisecracking, imposing Cordelia Thorn is preparing to restore.

At least, that’s what Archibald Van Arnam, the University of Minnesota’s own resident historian, tells her as he helps her explore the new space. Cordelia, Jane Lawless’ closest friend, wants to know the history of the place but doesn’t bargain for the body that’s found buried behind a brick wall or the secrets that accompany it—the Old Deep and Dark indeed. Jane would love to help, but she’s working on a case of her own. Her dad, Ray, has asked for her help investigating the murder of famous country-western singer Jordan Deere. Jordan’s stage-actress wife, Kit, has always been a little sweet on Ray, so he’s in shock when his interrogation of her leads him to lies and more lies.

Apparently the Deeres, with their two adult children in from out of town, are prepared to close ranks to keep family secrets.

Not that Jordan wanted to be a keeper of secrets anymore; it’s distinctly possible he was murdered over the impending release of a fictionalized tell-all memoir from which no member of his family seems to emerge unscathed. Jane wishes she could keep her attention on the case, but her thoughts keep drifting to her girlfriend, Avi, who’s out of town with Julia, Jane’s ex-turnednemesis-turned–Avi’s publisher.

FOR THE DEAD

Hallinan, Timothy Soho Crime (352 pp.) $25.00 | Nov. 4, 2014 978-1-61695-114-6 The human vermin who infest Bangkok inch ever closer to travel writer Poke Rafferty’s growing family.

Andrew Nguyen, the boy Rafferty’s adopted daughter, Miaow, has a crush on, has one hard-nosed father. Capt.

Nguyen, business liaison for the Vietnamese Embassy, is not only determined that his son marry a Vietnamese woman; he’s not about to buy Andrew another cellphone. So when Andrew loses his iPhone, Miaow, who knows just where to purchase stolen phones, helps him buy a replacement on the sly. The only |

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The Deere family has to carry much of the weight of the narrative. That’s great for readers who buy into their family gossip but less great for those who’ll miss the sharp wit Cordelia displays in Hart’s ongoing Jane Lawless series (Taken By the Wind, 2013, etc.).

Judd Wheeler, the police chief of sleepy little Prosperity, North Carolina, answers a call about a juvenile troublemaker named Spud Corliss and finds himself flat on his back, victim of the young offender’s marksmanship. Fast-forward two months, and Judd, who narrates in an amiable first person, returns to the job a little shakily. Childhood friend Kent Kramer, now the mayor, again suggests Judd take on a detective role as well, sweetening the offer with the title Chief Detective. The timing is ideal, and Kent’s an earnest charmer; Judd accepts. His first case is a disappearance at a property handled, as it happens,

by Kent. Roger Guthrie and his wife, Natalie, have been married for three years. Previously a widower, he works for a nearby bank and she’s from Russia, both bits of information Judd finds worthy of further investigation. Roger’s boss, Albert York, reports recent erratic behavior, and neighbors heard loud arguments between the couple. When Judd requests info on Natalie from Immigration, he gets a visit from slick Homeland Security Agent Jack Cantrell, a clear signal that sets Judd on the trail of an international criminal. Judd’s full plate becomes overstuffed with the surprise reappearance of an old nemesis named Sean “Shug” Burch.

Helms’ third Judd Wheeler procedural (Thunder Moon, 2011, etc.) has an appealing transparency and an easy rhythm, turning the reader into a sidekick in Judd’s methodical probe.

DEADLY RUSE

Helms, E. Michael Seventh Street/Prometheus (250 pp.) $15.95 paper | $11.99 e-book Nov. 11, 2014 978-1-61614-009-0 978-1-61614-077-9 e-book While he’s working toward his private eye’s license, ex-Marine Mac McClellan takes on a case to oblige his girlfriend after she sees a ghost.

St. George is one of those Florida panhandle towns where everyone’s known everyone else since childhood. So it shouldn’t be all that surprising when Kate Bell, who works in Gillman’s Marina, gets a glimpse of her old boyfriend, Wes Harrison— except that Wes drowned back in 1997 along with his buddies Eric Kohler and Robert Ramey. After Kate is done fainting, Mac is done reasoning with her, and the couple is done with the cold-shoulder tango, Mac assures Kate that he believes her and vows to get to the bottom of the mystery. And there’s quite a bit to get to the bottom of, since it turns out that two of the three drowning victims were in love with each other, and the identity of one of them seems to have been assumed by an excon with an impressive rap sheet. The closer Mac looks into the past, the less he believes it. Soon he’s wondering if Eric’s sister, pilot Rachel Todd, really died a few months after her brother in a Latin American crash from which no bodies were ever recovered. The trail to the truth leads through a stash of conflict diamonds, a drug bust and the Palmetto Royale Casino and Spa, where Mac finds wild child Dakota Owens, the cousin of his cop buddy Sgt. J.D. Owens, working as a blackjack dealer.

There’s never much doubt about whodunit; given the variety of felonies, readers are more likely to wonder who’s on first.

Studly Mac (Deadly Catch, 2013) and the bevy of available beauties who swarm around him should provide red meat for fans who still miss Travis McGee.

THE HUNTING DOGS

Horst, Jorn Lier Translated by Bruce, Anne Dufour (320 pp.) $18.00 paper | Oct. 7, 2014 978-1-908737-63-2 New information on an old case comes back to haunt seasoned Norwegian detective William Wisting in Horst’s somewhat plodding but intriguing series installment (Closed for Winter, 2014, etc.).

As is often the problem with Scandinavian imports, this is the eighth book in Horst’s series but only the third available in English, which leads to the feeling that the reader has missed plot details and character nuances by jumping in so late in the game.

Regardless, Wisting is a taciturn but empathetic hero who’s forced to revisit a 17-year-old murder case when new DNA tests cast doubt on a key piece of evidence. Rudolf Haglund was convicted of the kidnapping and murder of 20-year-old Cecilia Linde, a verdict that depended heavily on incriminating cigarette butts found at the scene. Now Haglund’s attorney has evidence to suggest that the cigarettes in question were planted at the scene by the police in order to secure a conviction in an otherwise weak case. As the lead investigator on the Linde case, Wisting takes the brunt of the blame and is suspended pending further inquiry.

In a rather obvious move, he makes sure to take the box of Linde case materials home before surrendering his badge. His daughter, Line, a crime reporter for Verdens Gang, wants to help prove her father’s innocence but is wrapped up in the seemingly random murder of a middle-aged man out walking his dog. It doesn’t take

OLDER THAN GOODBYE

Helms, Richard Five Star (388 pp.) $25.95 | Oct. 22, 2014 978-1-4328-2949-0

In his first official assignment as a detective, a small-town lawman is jolted way out of his comfort zone with a complex case that stretches halfway across the world.

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“The range of the 15 new stories here is remarkable.” from in the company of sherlock holmes

IN THE COMPANY OF SHERLOCK HOLMES Stories Inspired by the Holmes Canon

a crime-fiction connoisseur to work out that there’s likely a connection between these ostensibly unrelated crimes, making the final reveal—while not wholly dull—less exciting.

While not on par with other established Norwegian crime writers, Horst delivers an enjoyable if not entirely original read.

King, Laurie R.; Klinger, Leslie S.—Eds. Pegasus (384 pp.) $25.95 | Nov. 12, 2014 978-1-60598-658-6

HELL ON WHEELS

A notorious lawsuit over whether the Great Detective was in the public domain—he is, according to the court— held up this sequel to King and Klinger’s collection A Study in Sherlock (2011), but it’s well worth waiting for.

The range of the 15 new stories here is remarkable. One of the best, Sara Paretsky’s “The Curious Affair of the Italian Art Dealer,” is the most conservative, taking true delight in approximating Watson’s turns of phrase. Michael Sims retells “Silver Blaze” from the title character’s perspective. Cornelia Funke displays Holmes’ magnanimity toward a young thief who invades 221-B Baker St., and Nancy Holder provides a sad, spectral sequel to “The Beryl Coronet.” John Lescroart shows an aging Holmes helping out in the Dunkirk evacuation. Since Holmes can never die, Michael Connelly reimagines Dr. Watson as a deputy coroner working with Harry Bosch’s LAPD, and Jeffery Deaver, in a characteristically twisty tale, sets a Sherlockian wannabe against New York’s East Side Slasher. Holmes is only one among several inspirations behind Laura Caldwell’s “Art in the Blood,” Denise Hamilton’s “The Thinking Machine” and co-editor Klinger’s “The Closing.” Leah Moore and John Reppion resurrect Holmes in a fast-moving comic book, and Andrew Grant even more breathlessly abridges The Hound of the Baskervilles for social media. Harlan Ellison’s wild fantasia, the strangest item here, is more Ray Bradbury than Conan Doyle.

And in the wittiest story, Michael Dirda unmasks Doyle as a Strand house author whose byline conceals the identities of many contributors.

Notable among its many competitors mainly for raising the question of what can legitimately count as Sherlockian pastiche. Even readers who aren’t pleased with every answer will undoubtedly be stimulated to provide answers of their own, perhaps for the inevitable next collection.

Jaffarian, Sue Ann Midnight Ink/Llewellyn (312 pp.) $14.99 paper | Nov. 8, 2014 978-0-7387-1887-3 This time it’s personal, as paralegal Odelia Grey (Secondhand Stiff, 2013, etc.) investigates the murder of a quadriplegic rugby player.

Murder Ball, the aficionados’ name for quad rugby, is not for the squeamish. Played on a regulation basketball court by athletes with limited use of their arms and legs, the game depends on bashing your wheelchair full-tilt into your opponent’s. But even in a sport designed for maximum mayhem, Peter Tanaka had a reputation as a dirty player. And when Odelia and her husband, Greg Stevens—a fan who’s barred from playing the game because he’s only a paraplegic—watch Rocky Henderson of the Laguna Lunatics bash Tanaka’s head into the court, they know he’s finally stepped over the line. Tanaka dies but not from the beating; someone’s spiked his sports drink with cyanide. Odelia determines to find out who. Her investigation is sidetracked, however, by demands from her importunate boss, Mike Steele, who’s gotten himself into some kind of scrape that ended in a fight in a noted dive bar.

Steele tries to spin the incident as a car crash. He wants Odelia to cover for him, bringing his work home and keeping the office afloat while his face heals. While she’s juggling Steele’s demands and her inquiry into Tanaka’s death, Steele’s boss, Simon Tobin, comes to Odelia with an offer she can’t refuse.

He wants her to tail his mother, socialite Fanny Albright Tobin, and find out whether her new best friend has designs on the Tobin family fortune. What’s a plus-sized paralegal to do? As usual, Odelia does her best, and her best turns out to be not too shabby.

Jaffarian deftly juggles three franchises—Odelia’s, plus that of Granny Apples and the Madison Rose vampire series—but Odelia does better when she can focus more detection on fewer puzzles.

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A BILLION WAYS TO DIE

husband Benny’s failing grocery in Little Saigon. When she’s killed in a drive-by shooting in a dangerous area, the police put it down to bad luck, until the same thing happens to her wealthy sister, Molly Le Torcelli. Hank’s status as a relative gives Rick a chance to talk to all the family members, rich, poor and dysfunctional. The twins’ four children and the maid’s son were all sent to expensive private schools with varying results. Mary’s son, Tommy, a rebel who dropped out after being caught smoking pot, survives on menial jobs. His sister, Cindy, who’s bright but not a beauty like her mother, compensates by wearing loud clothes and clownlike makeup. The children of Larry Torcelli, a wealthy man with several car dealerships who paid for the children’s educations, are Yale grad and perennial student Jon and his gorgeous, dim-bulb younger sister, Kristen. The odd man out is handsome, brilliant, ambitious Danny Trinh, the son of Susie, the maid. Larry’s favorite, he has a good job with a large bank. Rick gathers information on this brood with the help of his ex-wife, Liz Sanburn, a police psychologist, and his partner, Jimmy Gadowicz. Together they try to figure out which of the usual motives—money, drugs, love—is behind the two murders.

The first entry in a planned series features a complex detective whose background as an Amerasian orphan born in Vietnam profoundly influences everything he does.

Knopf, Chris Permanent Press (272 pp.) $28.00 | Nov. 21, 2014 978-1-57962-363-0

What is it with people? Whoever it is that’s trying to kill Arthur Cathcart just won’t quit.

Now that he’s avenged himself on the triggerman who widowed and nearly executed him, Cathcart, a tech researcher of many names, just wants to be left alone to cuddle with his ladylove, blackjack dealer Natsumi Fitzgerald (Cries of the Lost, 2013, etc.). Their Caribbean idyll ends when their sailboat, Detour, is boarded by a crew of ruffians who snatch them in the dead of night, carry them off, lock them up in another craft, and demand that Cathcart tell them where “it” is. They don’t know Cathcart’s name; he has no idea what “it” is; nobody’s willing to be the first to talk. The stalemate is broken when Cathcart and Natsumi awaken from drugged sleep back at their marina, shaken but alive and determined to figure out who kidnapped them and why. The search leads Cathcart to the usual scenic locations (Puerto Rico, Miami, Switzerland, suburban Connecticut) and, thanks to the research of his reluctant collaborator, Strider the Data Thief, deep into the bowels of the Societe Commerciale Fontaine, where his undercover job as one Martin Goldman gives him a chance to show his researching chops before the inevitable blowup. Cathcart soon realizes the malign forces he’s tracking are also tracking him, and the disappearances of successive bank accounts he shares with Natsumi persuade him that “our security seemed to erode faster than our awareness could increase.”

After the brilliance of his debut (Dead Anyway, 2012), Cathcart’s third adventure shows an increasing tropism toward proficient but forgettable rounds of cat-and-mouse byplay punctuated by the occasional action scene.

THE SEVENTH LINK

Mayhew, Margaret Severn House (160 pp.) $27.95 | Nov. 1, 2014 978-0-7278-8421-3

A suspicious death interrupts a holiday in Lincolnshire.

Life in Frog End suits the Colonel down to the ground. He enjoys his pint at the Dog and Duck as well as an evening whisky on his patio with his next-door neighbor Naomi Grimshaw. He doesn’t mind putting in an odd hour at the church fete or reading the lesson at matins. And for company, there’s always his raggedy-eared tomcat, Thursday. Still, a man likes a change every so often. So when Geoffrey Cheetham, an old friend from his Singapore days, invites him to stay at his bed-and-breakfast in Lincolnshire, the Colonel packs Thursday off to Cat Heaven outside Dorchester and heads out to Bomber County. As advertised, the countryside is dotted with the remains of World War II RAF installations, where bomber squadrons took off for missions over Paris and Berlin. There’s even a Buckby RAF reunion this weekend, and the seven members of one Lancaster bomber crew are all staying with the Cheethams. The Colonel finds most of the old soldiers good company. Unlike American crews, which discourage fraternization between ranks, British bomber crews are highly democratic. Pretty soon, Bill Steed, the pilot, gathers his boys for a few rounds at the Fox and Grapes. Their pints make most of the crew mellow and sentimental. But mid-upper gunner Don Wilson soon

CAUGHT DEAD

Lanh, Andrew Poisoned Pen (290 pp.) $24.95 | $14.95 paper | $6.99 e-book $22.95 Lg. Prt. | Nov. 4, 2014 978-1-4642-0330-5 978-1-4642-0332-9 paper 978-1-4642-0333-6 e-book 978-1-4642-0331-2 Lg. Prt. Amerasian private detective Rick Van Lam is hired to look into the deaths of beautiful Vietnamese twins.

Hank Nguyen, a distant relative of the twins, once despised Rick, the teacher of his criminal justice class, for being halfwhite. But now Rick is his mentor as he goes through the Connecticut State Police Academy. Mary Le Vu was the poor sister who hardly ever left her East Hartford neighborhood or her 54

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“When the team arrives at the murder scene, the victim appears to be crawling out of her own grave.” from angel killer

THE HANDSOME MAN’S DELUXE CAFÉ

proves a problem. The Aussie is a loud drunk. When he turns up dead in the Cheethams’ lake, he’s more than a nuisance for his old pal Geoffrey and, by extension, for the Colonel.

Even out of his element, the Colonel (Dry Bones, 2012, etc.) shows wit and tenacity in tackling a problem with no easy solution.

McCall Smith, Alexander Pantheon (256 pp.) $24.95 | $12.99 e-book | Oct. 28, 2014 978-0-307-91154-4 978-0-307-91155-1 e-book

ANGEL KILLER

A slow mystery season in Botswana— there’s only one proper case for the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency—leaves its employees free to pursue all manner of adventures on their own.

The official case, as so often, involves no obvious crime.

When an amnesiac Indian lady carrying no identification wanders into the home of Mr. Sengupta and his widowed sister, “Miss Rose” Chattopadhyay, they naturally take her in but tell Precious Ramotswe that they’d feel better if they knew who their uninvited tenant was and where she’d come from. Putting aside the strategic plan (“The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency: Challenges Ahead and Options for the Future”) furniture salesman Phuti Radiphuti has developed for the agency, Mma Ramotswe (The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon, 2013, etc.) is able to put an unexpected operative on the case: Charlie, the chronically underachieving apprentice her husband, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, has finally let go from Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors. The episode in which Charlie, rescued from despair by Mma Ramotswe’s offer of a job as an apprentice detective, stakes out the Sengupta home in the hope of following his mysterious visitor provides the comic high point of this gentle tale. It’s not giving too much away to say that things don’t exactly work out as planned for Charlie—or for Mma Ramotswe’s partner Grace Makutsi, whose venture into the hospitality business, The Handsome Man’s DeLuxe Cafe, runs into sadly predictable problems. If only her husband had drawn up a strategic plan.

Thanks to that sturdy deus ex machina, Orphan Farm matron Mma Potokwane, all’s well that ends well in perhaps the most tranquil and unruffled entry in this renowned series.

Mayne, Andrew Bourbon Street/HarperCollins (368 pp.) $14.99 paper | Sep. 23, 2014 978-0-06-234887-6 A killer determined to bring miracles to life—and death—is hunted by a former magician determined to show that the culprit has nothing more than tricks up his sleeve.

Though she’s usually more the paper-pusher type, FBI Agent Jessica Blackwood is called into the office over the weekend by Dr. Jeffrey Ailes, better known as the Witchfinder. Ailes, who specializes in cases that require intricate knowledge of coding, is hot on the trail of someone who’s hacked into the FBI’s system with GPS coordinates, presumably of a dead body. When the team arrives at the murder scene, the victim appears to be crawling out of her own grave. Even though she’s very recently dead, records show that she was killed two years before. Now Jessica knows how she’ll be used in the case. The perp, nicknamed “Warlock” by the Bureau, is using some kind of illusion to stage elaborate crime scenes. Jessica’s been brought in as an expert in the art of illusion. As a fourth-generation magician, she’ll be the one who’s expected to understand the logic behind the elaborate staging of Warlock’s crimes. She’s helped not only by her expertise, but by the love—or at least the obsession—of Damian, an expert human chameleon and sometime stalker whose clues in the case help Jessica understand that Warlock may be only the beginning.

A magical debut that mixes charismatic characters, an intriguing premise and a dash of illusionists’ secrets to entertain readers and leave them eager for the next act.

BAD COUNTRY

McKenzie, CB Minotaur (304 pp.) $24.99 | Nov. 4, 2014 978-1-250-05354-1 A former Arizona rodeo star–turned– private eye takes on a plateful of cases that turn out to be different courses in the same criminal banquet.

Rodeo Grace Garnet lives in the only habitable dwelling in the remnants of a planned community in an area called The Hole. Returning home with his old dog, he finds the body of a murdered Native American man. It’s the start of a dizzyingly complicated and life-changing series of cases. Ray Molina, the sheriff |

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The choices made by editors McKinty (In the Morning I’ll Be Gone, 2014, etc.) and Neville (The Final Silence, 2014, etc.) celebrate lowlifes, convicts, hookers, private eyes, cops and reporters, and, above all, the gray city at the heart of each story.

of Los Jarros County, is a wealthy man with a thinly stretched department in a county whose vast empty areas provide an easy path for illegals and drug traffickers to enter the country. Ray’s daughter, Sirena Rae, is a wild child Rodeo dumped after she shot his dog, though she still drops by to visit. Rodeo’s friend Luis Azul Encarnacion, who owns the local trading post, sets him up to investigate the drive-by shooting of Samuel Rocha in Tucson. Samuel’s grandmother wants to hire him to find the killer even though her whole family ignored Samuel in favor of his younger beauty-queen sister, who was killed in a hit-andrun. Probably the only person who did love Samuel is his lover, Ronald Rocha, a stone-cold killer and former special operations soldier whose erstwhile commanding officer is a wealthy man, a Tea Party candidate whose wife gets into the act by hiring Rodeo to find a missing manuscript after her brother dies of an overdose. Rocha threatens to kill Rodeo’s dog and then Rodeo himself if he doesn’t provide him with the name of Samuel’s killer. As Rodeo slowly unravels a tangled mass of clues, he finds to his amazement that all these cases are interconnected.

An outstanding first novel written with clarity and authority and featuring a Southwest whose spare beauty covers unspeakable crimes and a detective who’s tough, honorable and authentic to the core.

THE FINAL SILENCE

Neville, Stuart Soho Crime (352 pp.) $26.95 | Oct. 28, 2014 978-1-61695-548-9

A woman with a family secret turns to a wounded cop with a weakness for women in trouble.

When Raymond Drew throws himself into the River Lagan from the old towpath in Belfast, he leaves behind a semidetached house, eight bags’ and boxes’ worth of personal effects, and a locked room that hides a dark personal history.

His 34-year-old niece, Rea Carlisle, hopes to take possession of the house rather than live with her submissive mother and coldly ambitious father. She’s also determined to get into the locked room. What she finds there makes her call DI Jack Lennon, who dated her briefly and dumped her in a bar, because she needs to talk to someone in law enforcement about her dreadful suspicions regarding her uncle. Jack (Ratlines, 2013, etc.) isn’t the most reliable champion: He’s on suspension, living with a woman he doesn’t love, drinking and popping pills, clinging to the right to care for his motherless daughter, and fighting his superior’s attempts to push him off the force after a shootout over a Ukrainian prostitute. Jack took three bullets to get her to safety and is still partly disabled from the injury. Although he secretly thinks Rea is crazy, he still tries to help. When she’s brutally murdered, Jack is one of the suspects, and he goes rogue to find the real killer. He has some secret information of his own as protection against those who are trying to destroy him professionally, but as the stakes rise, he realizes that being kicked off the force may not be the worst danger he faces. An uneasy alliance with cool-headed DCI Serena Flanagan from the Major Investigation Team and a visit to the even darker side of a still-bleak Belfast may be Jack’s only hope of survival.

Neville’s gritty tale sets a man barely holding onto his personal worth loose in a city still recovering from the Troubles.

BELFAST NOIR

McKinty, Adrian; Neville, Stuart—Eds. Akashic (256 pp.) $15.95 paper | $15.95 e-book Nov. 4, 2014 978-1-61775-291-9 978-1-61775-323-7 e-book Fourteen stories that explore the darker sides of the human psyche, each from a different neighborhood of Belfast.

“The Undertaking,” by Brian McGilloway, is a tale of a switched coffin and a deadly cargo. The narrator of Lucy Caldwell’s “Poison” recalls her schoolgirl obsession with a teacher. In Lee Childs’ “Wet with Rain,” a house rumored to kill its occupants more than lives up to its reputation. “Taking It Serious,” by Ruth Dudley Edwards, follows a boy who won’t compromise along his path to free Ireland.

The narrator of Gerard Brennan’s “Ligature” is a prison inmate who’s curious about why someone on the men’s side killed himself. Another prisoner is the subject of a reporter’s piece about crime and retribution in Glenn Patterson’s “Belfast Punk Rep.” In “The Reservoir,” by Ian McDonald, a supposedly dead man comes to his daughter’s wedding and confronts his enemies; a criminal barrister in Steve Cavanagh’s “The Grey” serves his client well but at a terrible cost. The teenage private eye in “Rosie Grant’s Finger,” by Claire McGowan, takes on a case of kidnapping; a more mature investigator gets a 4 a.m. phone call that he knows will mean trouble in Sam Millar’s “Out of Time.” A sting operation to break up a dog-fighting ring has an unexpected outcome in Arlene Hunt’s “Pure Game,” and an alternate identity changes hands in Alex Barclay’s “The Reveller.”

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THE NIGHT HUNTER

enforcer, informs her that the heroin was Mexican brown and the people involved were members of the Norteños gang. When Bai, learning that Chen is a college professor, pays a visit to his office, she turns up two dead Norteños. At Chen’s house, Bai and Lee find Wen Liu, a buyer and seller of confidential information. They follow her to a hotel, where she too is murdered.

Jason’s mother, Elizabeth, who acts as Bai’s mother figure, is so eager to marry Bai off that she sets her up with Howard Kwan, whom Bai instantly dislikes. Though the Kwans are fabulously wealthy, none of their three sons are equal to the task of running the empire. Instead, Howard’s mother thinks the tough-minded Bai, a woman who never gives up, would be a perfect fit. Jason, who still loves and protects Bai, thinks otherwise.

Bai’s second appearance (White Ginger, 2013) provides nonstop action and characters you care about despite their dubious lifestyles.

Ramsay, Caro Severn House (256 pp.) $28.95 | Nov. 1, 2014 978-0-7278-8422-0

A withdrawn, unlovely young woman teams up with a former Glasgow copper– turned–private eye to find out what’s become of her sister, who disappeared from the family home 57 days ago.

Sophie McCulloch is one of the few people on Earth her sister Elvira’s ever felt close to. As Elvie puts it: “Soph loves company whereas I don’t see the point of other people.” But since her alcoholic mother, Nancy, and her psychotic kid brother, Grant, are no help, Elvie’s forced to reach out when Sophie never returns from her evening run.

What she finds is anything but reassuring. A number of women have gone missing from Eaglesham, and Elvie’s on hand to see the body of one of them, Lorna Lennox, removed from the car windshield she fell onto. Sophie’s rumored lover, Mark Laidlaw, has vanished as completely as she has. The Find Sophie Campaign started by Rod Banks, Nancy’s boyfriend, turns up nothing but false leads. So Elvie allows herself to be drawn into an uneasy partnership with Billy Hopkirk, the former DCI who took to drink and got booted off the force after he failed to solve the mystery of Gillian Porter’s disappearance, which so eerily prefigured Sophie’s. Elvie, who’s never told anyone that Sophie had planned to escape from Eaglesham, is painfully torn about helping out, and the gruesome revelations that follow do nothing to give her peace.

Ramsay (The Blood of Crows, 2012, etc.) piles on the physical horrors, the psychological torments and, regrettably, the number of malefactors working independently and often at cross-purposes to bump up the number of missing persons. Those Scottish villages are the worst.

SONS OF SPARTA

Siger, Jeffrey Poisoned Pen (254 pp.) $24.95 | $14.95 paper | $9.99 e-book $22.95 Lg. Prt. | Oct. 7, 2014 978-1-4642-0314-5 978-1-4642-0316-9 paper 978-1-4642-0317-6 e-book 978-1-4642-0315-2 Lg. Prt. A rugged region of Greece harbors rough and vengeful crime syndicates. Is veteran Inspector Kaldis tough enough to break them?

Detective Yianni Kouros is summoned by his uncle to the remote region of Mani in Southern Greece, where lawlessness is common and family bonds are tight. Uncle, who formerly ran a small criminal empire, is about to sell his land to a developer in light of a recent tourist boom that threatens to change the nature of the area drastically. Shortly after absorbing this remarkable news, Kouros gets a call in Athens from his cousin Mangas reporting that Uncle has died after his car ran off the road. Kouros is immediately worried that it’s the start of a bloody clan war.

“Time to speak to the chief”—that is, his boss, Andreas Kaldis. Not one to mince words or avoid confrontation, Kaldis, who heads the country’s Special Crime Division, immediately confronts Orestes, Mani’s criminal alpha dog, who makes a point of snubbing him. At Uncle’s funeral, Kouros is shocked to see his grieving cousin Calliope challenge her brothers to seek vengeance via a bristling poem she delivers at her father’s grave. Tassos Stamatos, chief homicide investigator for the Cyclades islands, recommends that Andreas steer clear of Orestes, but that’s hardly his style; when he learns that Uncle was poisoned, his course is set. Kouros, meanwhile, seeks to befriend Uncle’s mates in the local tavern and elsewhere.

Both lawmen are surprised by the identity of the killer.

Kaldis’ sixth case (Mykonos After Midnight, 2013, etc.) offers a lively, gritty plot, an abundance of local color and two righteous heroes.

BLACK KARMA

Robinson, Thatcher Seventh Street/Prometheus (275 pp.) $15.95 paper | $11.99 e-book Nov. 4, 2014 978-1-61614-003-8 978-1-61614-006-9 e-book Taking people at their word puts a souxun, a people finder, at risk.

Bai Jiang is a beautiful, wealthy Chinese woman with a penchant for lost causes. When Inspector Kelly of the San Francisco City Police Department approaches her and her partner, Lee, for help in finding Daniel Chen, who Kelly claims was involved in a huge drug bust gone wrong, she reluctantly acquiesces. Since she has relatives high in the triad, Bai thinks it will be easy to find the trail of the missing China White heroin and $1 million in cash.

But Jason, the father of her 13-year-old daughter, Dan, and a triad |

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A VIRTUOUS DEATH

Ronda Burke, the handsome newsman invites Grace to write a book review column. Grace is wary. She’s just watched contractor Mike Sturgis threaten reporter Brenda Norris for writing an exposé of his shoddy building practices. But when Brenda is killed in a blaze that’s clearly arson, Grace decides to follow up on the story the reporter was pursuing when she died. Pretending to write a historical piece for Endurance’s 175th anniversary, Grace uncovers in Brenda’s notes an item that clearly piqued the dead newshound’s interest: a fire back in the 1960s that destroyed the Kessler farm, taking with it the two adult Kesslers and Nick Lawler, their son’s high school friend. Suspicion long rested on that son, Ted, whose body was never found.

What did Brenda know about the Kessler blaze that may have cost her life? Grace risks it all to find out, discovering that no town is too small to harbor big secrets.

Van Kirk’s debut novel, following a memoir of her own days as a teacher, offers a promising new heroine who’s clever, observant and smart enough to admit when she’s been fooled.

Trent, Christine Kensington (288 pp.) $15.00 paper | Oct. 28, 2014 978-0-7582-9326-8 The cards say murder in Queen Victoria’s court.

Undertaker Violet Harper’s help with several past mysteries (Stolen Remains, 2014, etc.) has made her a favorite of the queen.

Now Victoria has called upon her to attend a tarot reading by her favorite outdoor servant, John Brown, who claims the cards reveal a dangerous plot against someone in Buckingham Palace that only Violet can thwart. Violet’s American husband, Samuel, is in Wales promoting Alfred Nobel’s wondrous new invention, dynamite, to mine owners when he witnesses a massacre of innocents in a mine dispute. Samuel’s absence gives Violet, a guest of the queen, plenty of time to uncover the supposed palace plot. When several highborn ladies are found dead in mysterious circumstances, Violet discovers some tiny marks on their bodies, along with small pieces of odd-smelling cloth in two of their mouths. No believer in spirits, she’s certain that Brown’s séances are rigged but knows she must continue her investigation. The newly widowed husbands are prime suspects. So is a palace footman who’s an adherent of Karl Marx. Meanwhile, the free-spirited Princess Louise and her friends have gotten embroiled with a group fighting to repeal an unfair law that punishes prostitutes but not their clients. Any number of people learning of her involvement might have marked her for death. As she uncovers more information, Violet is attacked and narrowly escapes her own demise.

Filled with informative historical tidbits on some of the less salubrious aspects of Victorian times and plenty of red herrings but sadly in need of some judicious pruning.

(Agent: Helen Breitwieser)

BED OF NAILS

Varenne, Antonin Translated by Reynolds, Siân MacLehose Press (256 pp.) $26.99 | Nov. 4, 2014 978-1-62365-125-1 Verenne’s seamy debut takes you on a tour of the parts of Paris most tourists never see. Lucky them.

Lt. Richard Guérin heads the Suicides division of the Paris police force.

Assisted by a crew whose idea of a good time is to watch a video of a young man throwing himself under a truck, he does his best to find out why, and whether, people chose to bring their lives to an end in the City of Light. The latest corpse to fall under his purview is Alan Mustgrave, a fakir whose act made him stand out from other cabaret performers: Night after night, he’d take the stage of Le Caveau de la Bolée and pierce his skin with needles and knives, until the night he went too far even for an audience who’d acquired a taste for Grand Guignol. When Guérin meets John Nichols, the young psychologist who’s come from America to claim his old friend’s body, the two men compare notes and find that Alan’s been a long time dying. He served in Iraq, where he learned more about torture than most people would ever want to know. Then he was recruited for hush-hush government work. The last time John saw him, heroin was already eating Alan alive, and his affair with American embassy secretary Frank Hirsh did nothing to put the roses back in his cheeks. But an eyewitness account of a telltale blonde woman and two men lurking nearby suggests that his death, so obviously a suicide, may be part of a larger, darker pattern.

Varenne creates characters more compelling than his plot. Readers who hang in till the final page, however, will be rewarded with an almost unbearably sad ending.

THREE MAY KEEP A SECRET

Van Kirk, Susan Five Star (244 pp.) $25.95 | Nov. 19, 2014 978-1-4328-2968-1

A small Midwestern town is shaken when its investigative reporter is killed in a fire.

Founded by Presbyterians, Endurance was recognized by the territorial government of Illinois on July 30, 1836. Now, as the townsfolk plan its septa-quinta-quin-que-centennial festivities, complete with fireworks and floats, Grace Kimball plans her own celebration, prominently featuring margaritas, to mark her retirement from teaching. Her gal pals Jill Cunningham, Deb O’Hara and TJ Sweeney plan to join her, but their soiree is short-circuited when Jeff Maitlin, the new editor in chief of the Endurance Register, invites Grace for a drink at Tully’s sports bar. Under the watchful eyes of owner Bill Tully and waitress 58

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“When an anti-animal agitator is murdered, it’s unclear who wanted him dead badly enough to commit the crime.” from catwalk

OLYMPUS CONFIDENTIAL

argument about what’s to happen with the cat and her new brood of kittens gets out of hand, and soon enough, the police are involved and Charles is threatening to sue all parties. Janet catches a break when the cop involved is Hutchinson, who’s slowly been developing a soft spot for animals. However, Charles isn’t the sort to let things go. He even dares to show his face at the cat agility competition, where Janet’s cat Leo is set to make his debut. Being around pet owners is almost as bad as being around their pets, and Charles has his share of enemies in the crowd. When it later appears that Charles has been murdered, the question is not so much whodunit as whodidn’t.

Janet, like her animal companions, continues to evolve in Boneham’s series (The Money Bird, 2013, etc.) even if the mystery is too slight and silly to warrant much notice.

Warren, Robert B. Dragonfairy Press (372 pp.) $16.95 paper | Nov. 6, 2014 978-1-939452-48-1

Olympian shamus Plato Jones faces his toughest assignment yet: breaking out of prison.

Puckish Plato, who narrates in an arch first-person, begins his descent into trouble when he witnesses the robbery of the Bank of New Olympia by Felix King and his gang.

Though Felix and two accomplices are arrested, his dad, Louis, escapes with the loot via a jet pack and a force field. The next day, Zeus hatches a devilish plan over the complaints of his son Hermes, who wants to handle it himself. Plato will be arrested and sent to prison, where he’ll befriend Felix and learn all he can about his gang. Getting in involves a public arrest, a trial and a sentence of life without parole. Plato befriends Felix with few obstacles. But the Tartarus Maximum Security Penitentiary is the most dangerous place in the universe, and once Felix and Plato become besties, the sleuth turns his attention to escape.

There’s a shower-room brawl, led by the surly Reave and broken up by guards, and a confrontation with a snarling pack of Cerberuses, which leads them to bombastic Cronus, king of the Titans and father of Zeus. Achilles buttonholes the duo and convinces Felix to show him some magic. Cronus’ return creates enough confusion for the escape midway through this twisty adventure, which includes a run-in with Daedalus, twofisted new companion Helena, and a suitably miraculous finale.

In his second caper (Murder on Olympus, 2013) Plato plays Bob Hope to Felix’s Bing Crosby, keeping the plot rattling blissfully along with cartoonish action and wisecracks aplenty.

DEEPER THAN THE GRAVE

Whittle, Tina Poisoned Pen (304 pp.) $24.95 | $14.95 paper | $6.99 e-book $22.95 Lg. Prt. | Nov. 4, 2014 978-1-4642-0262-9 978-1-4642-0264-3 paper 978-1-4642-0265-0 e-book 978-1-4642-0263-6 Lg. Prt. An ill wind scatters exactly the wrong bones over Tai Randolph’s suburban Atlanta neighborhood.

“Please please please, let the shop still have a roof,” prays Tai as a tornado bears down on the gun shop she inherited from her Uncle Dexter. She’s right to worry about the storm but not for the reason she thinks. Despite the contrary prayers of her meddlesome neighbor Brenda Lovejoy-Burlington, president of the Kennesaw Revitalization Commission, the shop is fine. The tornado has alighted instead on the tomb of Pvt. Braxton Amberdecker, the Confederate soldier whose remains were recovered and interred only two years ago, and scattered his bones all over the landscape. It’s sad news for matriarch Rose Amberdecker and her whole family. Even worse, the most cursory examination reveals telltale clues, like the presence of a NASCAR belt buckle, that the bones aren’t Braxton’s at all but those of Lucius Dufrene, a convicted thief who’d worked for Dexter and slept with Rose’s daughter, Chelsea, whose bridegroom, rising-star financier Jeremy Pratchett, knows nothing about the affair. A little bit of digging persuades Tai and her irresistible boyfriend, Trey Seaver, an ex-cop working for Phoenix Corporate Security, that the reason Lucius’ bones ended up in Braxton’s tomb has as much to do with Braxton as with Lucius. To unearth the connection between the two corpses, she’ll have to tangle with Civil War re-enactors, relic traders from the Russian Mafia and a ring of thieves stealing laundry detergent.

Tai’s fourth (Blood, Ash and Bone, 2013, etc.) connects murders past and present—not to mention the mystery and the hot-sheets romance—with gratifying conviction.

CATWALK

Webster Boneham, Sheila Midnight Ink/Llewellyn (336 pp.) $14.99 paper | Oct. 8, 2014 978-0-7387-3488-0 When an anti-animal agitator is murdered, it’s unclear who wanted him dead badly enough to commit the crime.

A phone call about a kidnapping alarms Janet MacPhail even though the caller is her mildly histrionic friend Alberta. Janet is so flustered by the call that she forgets to ask the identity of the victim before setting out to Alberta’s with her Australian shepherd, Jay, in tow. The kidnappee turns out to be Gypsy, a cat Alberta has recently taken in. Luckily, Jay has no trouble picking up the scent and leading them to the victim. Unluckily, Gypsy is found on the property of notable local grump Charles Rasmussen, who would as soon exterminate Gypsy as let Alberta and Janet take her back home. An |

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THE SHOTGUN ARCANA

science fiction and fantasy

Belcher, R.S. Tor (400 pp.) $25.99 | $12.99 e-book | Oct. 7, 2014 978-0-7653-7458-5 978-1-4668-4273-1 e-book An 1870s Western town suffers a fresh assault of eldritch threats in this compelling and action-packed sequel to The Six-Gun Tarot (2013).

A shattered skull inhabited by the spirit of murder draws its former guardian, the corrupt angel Raziel, and his disciples, a horde of insane cannibals, to the town of Golgotha, Nevada, just in time for Thanksgiving. It’s up to the doubting angel Biqa (aka Malachi Bick, the town’s saloon/brothel keeper and richest man) and Golgotha’s other unusual citizens to defeat the evil crew. Romance also blooms in town between a number of couples, including Clay Turlough and his best friend Auggie’s undead former wife, Gerta, whom Clay has resurrected via stitched-together corpse parts and a serum concocted from demonic worms. Belcher attempts to shoehorn 21st-century values concerning women’s rights, fair treatment for sex workers, and interracial and gay romance into a late-19th-century milieu. That might not entirely ring true—but on the other hand, most of what happens in Golgotha is plenty (and enjoyably) implausible anyway. What seemed like a too-large cast in the previous installment makes more sense in the context of a longer series; the author has definitely extended and deepened our relationships with these people. Just as Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s hometown of Sunnyvale sat on a Hellmouth, so, too, does Golgotha act as a nexus for all things supernatural and sinister. The real question is why anyone would choose to stay there; the sad but generally intriguing truth is that most have nowhere else to go, and incursions of chupacabras, spectral spiders and serial killers seem like a small price to pay. Can Belcher keep things fresh as he continues to chronicle the doings of this doomed desert town? Only time will tell.

On to the next apocalypse!

HERACLIX AND POMP A Novel of the Fabricated and the Fey

Aguirre, Forrest Underland Press (280 pp.) $24.95 | Oct. 14, 2014 978-1-63023-001-2

A historical fantasy set in 1780s Vienna is the first full-length novel from the author of the story collection Fugue XXIX (2005, etc.).

Mattatheus Mowler, an evil wizard, blackmailer and power broker, prepares to bargain with demons to extend his life.

Mowler’s reluctant assistant, Heraclix, a giant “golem” (actually a Frankenstein’s monster stitched together from mismatched body parts), hides as the wizard prepares his victim: Pomp, a tiny, immortal winged fairy. (But since she can turn invisible, how does he catch her?) However, as Heraclix watches Mowler stab Pomp and drain her blood during the black-magic ceremony, he decides to intervene; he snatches Pomp and flees, setting the house aflame and leaving Mowler apparently immolated. The fairy soon recovers from her ordeal and the odd couple question one another. Heraclix has vague, disconnected memories of a previous existence, while Pomp lacks any concept of the passage of time. Once the fire burns out, they return to the house, hoping to recover any papers that might have survived, only to be accosted by members of Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II’s Imperial Guard. Forced to flee once more, they take refuge in the city’s Romany quarter. Among the papers they salvage, however, is a drawing of Heraclix’s left hand: a hand that’s oddly slender, heavily tattooed with occult designs and prone to take action independent of Heraclix’s own wishes. Clearly there are mysteries within mysteries to be elucidated. Once we finally learn who and what Heraclix was before, though, we’re left wondering why he was reanimated at all, while Pomp’s Fairyland is merely silly and dull. Yet the narrative gains power and weight as the story develops, sparking along through Europe to Asia Minor via hell as the author—almost visibly—works out what’s really going on and what the large, well-drawn cast members have been plotting.

Massively flawed, then, but nonetheless hugely enjoyable.

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THE TIME ROADS

Bernobich, Beth Tor (288 pp.) $15.99 paper | $9.99 e-book Oct. 14, 2014 978-0-7653-3125-0 978-1-4299-5209-5 e-book An alternate universe risks destroying its own timeline (or perhaps several timelines) in this new novel by the author of Allegiance (2013, etc.).

Steampunk novels are often set in or near London, and a cameo by Queen Victoria is practically de rigueur. So it’s a pleasure to encounter a steampunk work in which England |

“Most Gibson plots essentially concern a race for a particular piece of information—one side seeks to possess it, the other to suppress it.” from the peripheral

has a decidedly diminished role. These four interwoven stories (three previously published elsewhere) take place between 1897 and 1914 in an alternate Europe where Eire (Ireland) is a powerful nation that also rules over a splintered England as well as Wales; Alba (Scotland) remains independent. Aine Lasairiona Devereaux, the young queen of Eire, aided by her most trusted agent, Cmdr. Aidrean O Deaghaidh, struggles to establish political ascendancy over treacherous members of her own government, defuse Anglian rebels seeking independence, and build amicable relations with a turbulent Europe and Africa in the potential run-up to this universe’s equivalent of World War I. The kicker is that physicists and mathematicians in Eire and elsewhere have made significant progress in time-travel research. Dissidents of all sorts seek to turn that research into a weapon, creating fractures and disruptions that cause memory confusion, madness, destruction and death. The book ends on a note of hope, albeit an uncertain one: Given what we know of time travel, both negative and positive events can be overwritten.

Feels slightly unfinished but in an interesting and appropriate way. (Agent: Vaughne Lee Hansen)

CARBIDE TIPPED PENS Seventeen Tales of Hard Science Fiction

Bova, Ben; Choi, Eric—Eds. Tor (400 pp.) $27.99 | $14.99 e-book | Dec. 2, 2014 978-0-7653-3430-5 978-1-4668-1019-8 e-book A science-fiction anthology that strikes a balance between radical scientific ideas and grounded human emotion.

Editors Bova and Choi aim to “follow the classic definition of hard SF, in which some element of science or technology is so central to the plot that there would be no story if that element were removed.” Unfortunately, a couple of their selections take that mission a little too far, becoming more idea than story. But most of the stories here are very good, and several are great, combining intriguing new ideas with satisfying old emotions like love, regret, jealousy and grief. The best take their near- or distant-future settings for granted, indicating the ways our world has changed with light touches—like the “sweet and salted insect finger food” served at a garden party in Gregory Benford’s “Lady With Fox”—in order to prove that people are people, even when they’re outrunning a black hole or mining for water on one of Jupiter’s moons. Kate Story’s “The Yoke of Inauspicious Stars” makes an old, familiar love story feel new again and not just because of the cryopods; Nancy Fulda’s “Recollection” and Daniel H. Wilson’s “The Blue Afternoon that Lasted Forever” bring a laserlike focus to pure, powerful moments of human connection. One of the collection’s most memorable characters, in David DeGraff ’s “SIREN of Titan,” isn’t human at all, but she’ll still break your heart. |

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The few misses in this collection are more than made up for by the strength of the hits. Hard-core sci-fi fans will gobble this up, and readers newer to the genre should give it a chance, too.

THE PERIPHERAL

Gibson, William Putnam (400 pp.) $28.95 | Oct. 28, 2014 978-0-399-15844-5

While placed firmly in the sci-fi genre of his earlier works, Gibson’s latest retains the social commentary from his more recent novels (Zero History, 2010, etc.).

Most Gibson plots essentially concern a race for a particular piece of information—one side seeks to possess it, the other to suppress it. (Although to be fair, isn’t that the plot of most thrillers?)

What sets each book apart is the worldbuilding that surrounds that plot kernel. This time around, it’s particularly intriguing. Flynne, a young woman living in a poor, rural American county (probably Southern, though it’s never specified) in the near future, believes she’s beta testing a video game, witnessing the “death” of a virtual character in an urban high-rise. In fact, Flynne has gotten a view into a possible London existing decades in the future and has seen an actual woman get murdered. The two timelines can exchange information and visit each other virtually, via the androidlike “peripherals” of the title. That ability is enough for various future factions to hire killers to go after Flynne and her family or to protect them from that fate, as well as to change the events of her timeline sufficiently enough to ensure that it will never become that future, where, despite considerable scientific advancement, a cascade of disasters has eliminated the majority of human and animal life. Gibson’s strength has always been in establishing setting, while his characters tend to seem a bit blank and inaccessible; for example, alcoholic Wilf ’s constant attempts to reach for a drink read more like an annoyingly persistent quirk than a serious psychological problem. Gibson seems to leave his characters’ motives deliberately obscure; due to that and his tendency to pour his energy into the chase, not the goal, the story’s resolution basically fizzles.

This is quintessential Gibson: gonzo yet cool, sharpedged, sophisticated—but ultimately, vaguely unsatisfying.

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SYMBIONT

SCARLET TIDES

Grant, Mira Orbit/Little, Brown (608 pp.) $26.00 | Nov. 25, 2014 978-0-316-21899-3 Series: Parasitology, 2

Hair, David Jo Fletcher/Quercus (704 pp.) $26.99 | $26.99 e-book | Oct. 7, 2014 978-1-62365-829-8 978-1-62365-830-4 e-book

The second in Grant’s new series (Parasite, 2013) featuring a society battling a tapeworm takeover picks up with the adventures of Sal Mitchell, a tapeworm that’s overcome her host’s body.

The series premise is that a company called SymboGen developed a tapeworm implant to help humans regulate their health issues. But the tapeworms turn out to be sentient beings, and once they realize where they are, they claim their hosts. Most affected humans become zombielike creatures known as “sleepwalkers.” As this book begins, it’s the fall of 2027 in the San Francisco Bay area. Sal suffered brain damage in a car accident, after which her tapeworm chewed through her body into her brain and took over. Unlike the tapeworm/ humans who became sleepwalkers, Sal developed a personality, found Nathan, her boyfriend, and helped him fight against the evil Dr. Steven Banks of SymboGen. Her sister Tansy, also a tapeworm, is missing, presumably held captive by SymboGen, and as Sal suffers through one fainting episode after another, sleepwalkers turn the area into a bloody battleground. Meanwhile, back at the lab, Sherman, another of Banks’ creations, who does everything evil but twirl his handlebar mustache, works hard to bring the tapeworms to power. Grant stumbles in this volume: There’s an oddly clumsy attempt to justify Sal’s fear of riding in cars, and readers will find it hard to root for any character in this much-too-long novel. Sal, the tapeworm, is a creepily unsympathetic protagonist; Nathan the boyfriend is a human who, when he finds out his girlfriend is really a tapeworm, doesn’t find it disturbing; and none of the other characters are particularly compelling. The upcoming tapeworm apocalypse will probably make most readers feel queasy rather than pique their interest.

For those who’ve been pining for a human/tapeworm romance.

“The windship flotilla has already left for Hebusalim.” The ship may have sailed and the sheets may be a little slack, but that doesn’t keep Gurvon Gyle, Ramita Ankesharan and company from coming back for more swords and sorcery in Hair’s latest.

In this second volume of the Moontide Quartet, following last year’s Mage’s Blood, New Zealander Hair spins a satisfying fantasy that, in some aspects, is a sort of mashup of J.R.R. Tolkien and Henry Kissinger. The Emperor Constant, suitably Byzantine, heads a polity that has designs on its neighbors, and thanks to the happy fact the moontide is on the way and that Rondelmar boasts “all the strongest magi,” it seems as if he has a fighting chance to control the known world. Hair is strongest at building said world: The details of geography and ethnography are believable, complete and utterly satisfying. Some of the other kit is more derivative, though, as with the so-called Scytale of Corineus, a gewgaw powerful enough, as the resourceful old Belonius Vult puts it, “to make Noros great—the equal of Pallas.” Call it the one Scytale to rule them all: It’s big mojo, but we’ve seen that trope before. Still, Hair capably spins a rather elaborate storyline, or better multiple storylines, all suitably tangled, given the conspiracies and mind-scramblings that are afoot. Suffice it to say that the reader will want to keep plenty of gnostic energy on hand to follow these complex (and sometimes overly long) comings and goings, which, given that there are two more volumes to come, necessarily end on a cliffhanger; as one of the principal players says in closing, darkly, “The real war has only just begun.”

So it has, and fans of the series will be eager to see what comes next.

THE ABYSS BEYOND DREAMS

Hamilton, Peter F. Del Rey/Ballantine (640 pp.) $30.00 | Oct. 21, 2014 978-0-345-54719-4 Series: Chronicle of the Fallers, 1

Doorstopper—not that Hamilton writes anything else—first entry of a new two-book saga set in his popular Commonwealth universe (The Evolutionary Void, 2010, etc.).

The Void, an enigmatic space-time construct at the core of the galaxy, is difficult to penetrate and—apparently—impossible to escape from. Worse, at any moment it may expand uncontrollably and swallow all life in the galaxy. The Void’s boundaries are guarded by the elephantlike Raiel in a million-year-long vigil.

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“Remarkable, revelatory and not to be missed.” from the three -body problem

In the year 3326, Nigel Sheldon, 1,000 years old and one of the founders of the Commonwealth, receives a visit from Vallar, a Raiel, who persuades him to help develop a scheme to infiltrate the Void. The only knowledge of conditions inside the Void comes from the Dreamer, Edeard of planet Querencia, who unfortunately is dead. Once the Raiel punch Nigel through into the Void, a Skylord, one of a space-going alien race that act as conductors of souls inside the Void, leads him to Bienvenido, a planet whose human civilization derives from a colony expedition that vanished from the Commonwealth 200 years ago. He learns several crucial facts: Here in the Void, mental powers such as telepathy work, a limited form of time travel is possible, and the planet suffers relentless assaults from the Fallers, a cannibalistic alien species of biological mimics. In order to test his theories of how the Void might be destroyed, Nigel needs to learn what the locals know. Unfortunately, their civilization is corrupt, sclerotic, totalitarian and, understandably, paranoid about the Faller threat. The characters, always Hamilton’s strength, remain as distinctive as ever, even when the book’s taken over by what at first glance seems only a subplot. And even when the ideas are shaky, there’s always the time-travel gimmick to iron out any wrinkles.

Solidly engrossing fare for the series’ faithful.

FALLING SKY

Khanna, Rajan Pyr/Prometheus Books (260 pp.) $17.00 paper | $11.99 e-book Oct. 7, 2014 978-1-61614-982-6 978-1-61614-983-3 e-book Blogger and short story writer Khanna turns his sights to the skies in this debut novel.

Life in the Sick isn’t easy. In postapocalyptic America, the Bug has changed life as we know it, turning ordinary humans into insane slavering cannibals known as Ferals. The Bug that burned through the world of the Clean (as our time is known) has left only a few precarious human settlements behind, settlements frequented by airship pilots known as zeps. In one of these settlements, a place improbably named Apple Pi, a band of determined scientists led by a woman named Miranda continues to research the Bug at great risk to the community, believing it can still be cured. Into this world comes lone wolf Ben Gold, a dirigible pilot with a gun in his holster and a chip on his shoulder (“you don’t need much else,” he says). Ben doesn’t believe in Miranda’s scientific mission but somehow believes in Miranda personally. Hired to keep Miranda safe during her foraging missions among the Ferals, Ben is torn between the strange loyalty he feels toward her and his own fatalistic sense that her mission is doomed: “We are all Life’s bitches, until Death steals us away.” But when Apple Pi is raided by airships from a mysterious Viking colony known as Valhalla, which drops contagious Ferals on the unsuspecting scientists, Ben is forced to go on the run. The raiders steal |

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Miranda’s research—along with Ben’s dirigible, The Cherub— and to get it back, and find out what Valhalla is up to, Ben makes an increasingly implausible and dangerous series of decisions in an effort to redeem himself.

It’s post-apocalypse as Western, only done first and better in Firefly. A fast and mindless adventure story adding little that’s new or exciting to the genre.

THE THREE-BODY PROBLEM

Liu, Cixin Translated by Liu, Ken Tor (400 pp.) $25.99 | $12.99 e-book | Nov. 11, 2014 978-0-7653-7706-7 978-1-4668-5344-7 e-book Strange and fascinating alien-contact yarn, the first of a trilogy from China’s most celebrated science-fiction author.

In 1967, at the height of the Cultural Revolution, young physicist Ye Wenjie helplessly watches as fanatical Red Guards beat her father to death. She ends up in a remote re-education (i.e. forced labor) camp not far from an imposing, top secret military installation called Red Coast Base. Eventually, Ye comes to work at Red Coast as a lowly technician, but what really goes on there? Weapons research, certainly, but is it also listening for signals from space—maybe even signaling in return? Another thread picks up the story 40 years later, when nanomaterials researcher Wang Miao and thuggish but perceptive policeman Shi Qiang, summoned by a top-secret international (!) military commission, learn of a war so secret and mysterious that the military officers will give no details. Of more immediate concern is a series of inexplicable deaths, all prominent scientists, including the suicide of Yang Dong, the physicist daughter of Ye Wenjie; the scientists were involved with the shadowy group Frontiers of Science. Wang agrees to join the group and investigate and soon must confront events that seem to defy the laws of physics. He also logs on to a highly sophisticated virtual reality game called “Three Body,” set on a planet whose unpredictable and often deadly environment alternates between Stable times and Chaotic times. And he meets Ye Wenjie, rehabilitated and now a retired professor. Ye begins to tell Wang what happened more than 40 years ago. Jaw-dropping revelations build to a stunning conclusion. In concept and development, it resembles top-notch Arthur C. Clarke or Larry Niven but with a perspective—plots, mysteries, conspiracies, murders, revelations and all—embedded in a culture and politic dramatically unfamiliar to most readers in the West, conveniently illuminated with footnotes courtesy of translator Liu. Remarkable, revelatory and not to be missed.

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HERITAGE OF CYADOR

pleasant thing. It relies on the spilling of blood, and while Lem chooses to limit himself to the power he can get from cutting into his own skin, other magicians are less scrupulous and use the blood of others on a scale that ranges from murder to the secret engineering of the biggest disasters in human history.

When Lem and Mags stumble across a dead girl in a bathtub, her skin marked with the symbols of a mysterious and frighteningly powerful spell, they find themselves caught in a plot that would destroy the world for one impossible spell. Though the book has an exaggerated air of toughness and a tendency toward graphic violence that might be more effective on film, the characters are engaging and just odd enough to be easily imagined. The plot moves from one tense and dangerous moment to another, piling on high-stakes incidents so thickly that it’s forced to break into distinct sections that almost feel like smaller, separate novels under the umbrella of a single title.

The writing is clear and goes down easily, though a reliance on stock tough-guy vernacular and predictably imagined female characters sometimes trips up its believability. At its best, the story races along with an appealing balance of grimness and likability.

An action-filled urban fantasy that offers absorbing storytelling in a gritty atmosphere of crime and a merciless, often ugly, magic built on violence.

Modesitt Jr., L.E. Tor (528 pp.) $27.99 | Nov. 18, 2014 978-0-7653-7613-8

The 18th volume in Modesitt’s seemingly immortal Recluce fantasy series, following Cyador’s Heirs (2014, etc.).

After years of border skirmishing and petty provocations, Lerial, the second son of Duke Kiedron of Cigoerne, uses his mastery of order and chaos, the competing natural forces that shape his world and define the magic that exists within it, to annihilate an Afritan military force penetrating the border.

Five years later, Lerial’s wise mentor, Majer Altyrn, dies (without putting in an appearance). Kiedron suspects an impending invasion of Afrit by its belligerent neighbor, Heldya. Without Afrit to protect its northern flank, Cigoerne, smaller, poorer and less populous, could not long withstand Heldya’s vast armies. So Kiedron hastily arranges with Duke Atroyan to send Lerial and three companies of Mirror Lancers, Cigoerne’s crack troops, to Afrit’s aid. Not only must Lerial win over skeptical or hostile Afritans and deploy his magic, his wits and his martial skills to thwart the invaders, but somehow he must expose and neutralize the subtle treacheries of Afrit’s merchant class, as well as navigate dangerous political and familial waters. The general ambience is early modern Europe—think 16th-17th century, with magic replacing firearms. Inevitably, the entries possess a certain generic similarity as well as a resemblance to other Modesitt works such as the Imager series. Here, then, we see a young man with magical, military and diplomatic skills faced with ordeals that will challenge his ability to make good decisions under life-threatening circumstances. Fortunately, the author’s not only a superb craftsman and character-builder, but a consummate storyteller, so that each good-against-evil clash appears fresh and engrossing.

Top-notch Modesitt, even if you’re not a series regular.

r om a n c e THE SHOCKING SECRET OF A GUEST AT THE WEDDING

Alexander, Victoria Zebra/Kensington (352 pp.) $7.99 paper | Oct. 28, 2014 978-1-4201-3226-7

A Victorian-era New York banker finds out his mother lied to him about his father’s death. His father is very much alive—and the heir to an English earldom.

Alexander (The Scandalous Adventures of the Sister of the Bride, 2014, etc.) returns to her Millworth Manor series with a new historical romance about Jackson Quincy Graham Channing, straight-laced vice president of his maternal grandfather’s American bank. Jack’s life is turned upside down when a dull dinner party is interrupted by the arrival of Col. Basil Channing, a British adventurer who was married to Jack’s mother, Elizabeth, a scant week before her parents persuaded the couple to part and have the marriage annulled. When Elizabeth realized she was pregnant, she never got up the nerve to inform Col. Channing that they were still married, or that he was a father. Now united after 30 years, Jack and his father travel to England. Jack is charmed by his cousins, the ancestral home he’ll inherit one day and a redheaded family

WE ARE NOT GOOD PEOPLE

Somers, Jeff Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster (688 pp.) $16.99 paper | $11.99 e-book Oct. 7, 2014 978-1-4516-9679-0 978-1-4516-9682-0 e-book

In this hefty and insistently entertaining novel, Somers (Chum, 2013, etc.) creates a world of seedy urban crime that develops into a violent epic with the help of an intriguingly bloody magic system.

Lem Vonnegan is a Trickster, a small-time con man who uses magic to scrape out a living for himself and his large, endearingly childish sidekick, Pitr Mags. Magic, in this world, is not a 64

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THE ACCIDENTAL COUNTESS

friend. But Lady Theodosia Winslow, also known as Teddy, has decided to stop viewing marriage as the goal of her life and the easy way out of her financial difficulties. She wants to focus instead on her discreetly genteel party planning business. “I’ve tasted what it feels like to provide for myself,” she declares.

Although Teddy and Jack enter into a sham engagement so she can avoid an unwanted marriage to her cousin, both resist making the engagement a real commitment.

The plot avoids leaning too heavily on the love story; readers will come for the romance and stay for the family dramas as the characters struggle to understand themselves.

Bowman, Valerie St. Martin’s (320 pp.) $7.99 paper | Oct. 28, 2014 978-1-250-04208-8 A group of friends performs a complicated ruse to help Lady Cassandra Monroe woo her cousin’s intended in this Regency romance that borrows liberally from The Importance of Being Earnest.

Bowman (The Unexpected Duchess, 2014, etc.) returns to her Playful Brides series with an aging debutante who secretly loves Capt. Julian Swift, the man who is all but engaged to her cousin Penelope. Julian has been at war for seven years, buoyed through the horrors of the battlefield by regular letters from Cass. Now he has returned to England, ready to seek out Penelope and tell her he can’t marry her after all. But Penelope, who doesn’t want to marry him either, and thinks he intends to formalize their engagement, invents a convenient friend in the country named Patience Bunbury and pretends to have gone to visit her in order to avoid seeing him.

Meanwhile, Cassandra’s friend Lucy Hunt, the new Duchess of Claringdon, concocts a crazy scheme to allow Cass and Julian to spend some time together. She persuades Cass to pretend to be Patience Bunbury and lure Julian to the country for a house party. Lucy is sure that a few days spent in Cassandra’s company will persuade Julian that he loves her and that he will forgive their deception once he finds out that Patience is really his dear friend and correspondent, Cassandra. All seems to be working out when Julian doesn’t recognize Cassandra, who has transformed from a gawky teenager into a total bombshell in the years he’s been away. But as more and more friends and relatives are drawn into the deception, it seems inevitable that Julian will learn the truth before Cass gets up the nerve to tell him herself..

ROGUE SPY

Bourne, Joanna Berkley Sensation (336 pp.) $7.99 paper | Nov. 4, 2014 978-0-425-26082-1 When two former double agents who trained together as children risk everything to help each other, falling in love becomes the most dangerous move in a deadly spy master’s game.

Pax and Cami knew each other as Verite and Devoir when they were children in France during the Revolution, trained to infiltrate British intelligence. Ten years later, they are both successfully ensconced in vulnerable positions, but neither has ever acted against England. Instead, Pax has become a valued member of a spy ring, while Cami has lived as the niece of the country’s best codebreakers and created one of their most impenetrable codes.

Since their brutal French tutors ultimately fell to the guillotine, no one in France is alive to remember their horrid mission, and Pax and Cami have lived in peace, loyal to England. But someone has learned about Cami’s duplicity, and the true niece of her adopted aunts is apparently alive. While the easy path would be to disappear into a new life, Cami is honor-bound to try to save the girl and let the aunts know she exists. Trying to gain information from the blackmailer who wants her code, she runs into Pax, who is stunned to realize his childhood friend is in England.

He knows his first allegiance is to her, above any loyalty to his friends or the king. Digging to find answers, they must come clean about their pasts to each other—even before they met in France, since their family connections will add even more complexity to an already dense and treacherous situation—and to his friends and superior, then stay two steps ahead of their shared enemy to stay alive and fight for their future.

Another win for Bourne: smart, exquisite writing, an intricate plot and breathtaking romance.

The references to Oscar Wilde’s play are more of a tribute than a straight retelling, which keeps this hilarious and lively story from becoming too predictable. Bowman is one to watch.

WHAT A LADY NEEDS FOR CHRISTMAS

Burrowes, Grace Sourcebooks Casablanca (384 pp.) $7.99 paper | Oct. 7, 2014 978-1-4022-7881-5

An aristocratic heiress trying to escape social ruin is aided by an attractive businessman who offers her the shelter of marriage, though neither expects the venture to end in love.

Lady Joan Flynn is desperate to get out of Edinburgh for Christmas after her honor may have been compromised, so discovering there’s no space on the train leaves her anxious. When a small child forces her father—Scottish |

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businessman Dante Hartwell—to offer Joan a place in their rail car, she’s grateful but wary. She’s met him in social situations over the past few weeks, and Hartwell has a sister and two children to act as chaperones, but she’s still shaken by the previous night’s events. She had met an acquaintance named Valmonte to discuss her interest in women’s clothing design, and she’s not sure what happened between them. What she does remember is completely inappropriate, and she fears the worst—that she could be completely and utterly ruined. She finds herself confessing her concerns to Hartwell, who offers to marry her.

He’s a widower who was hoping to find wealthy investors in Edinburgh, so marriage to an aristocrat will further his industrial aspirations; he also finds Joan compelling and attractive, though he doesn’t tell her that. As for Joan’s previous impression of Hartwell: She “found him lacking many of the attributes she associated with a proper gentleman. He neither gossiped nor flattered nor took surreptitious liberties in triple meter. In short...she’d liked him.” The two agree to marry, then must navigate her family’s distrust and the dastardly Valmonte’s threats, realizing along the way how deep their feelings are despite their unorthodox start. Burrowes’ great writing and ability to bring her characters to life with subtle power and authenticity enhance an emotionally charged romance.

A touching and sensual holiday charmer. (Agent: Steve Axelrod)

penchant for taking on causes makes him wonder if he’s simply one of her do-good projects. When their social, academic, athletic and economic worlds collide, Silas and Dylan must decide who they are before they can consider a future with each other.

Carmack cleverly and effectively explores identity, economics and personal demons against the high-stakes backdrop of college football.

A sexy, dynamic combination of the romance and coming-of-age elements the new-adult genre is known for.

(Agent: Suzie Townsend)

CHRISTMAS BRIDES

Enoch, Suzanne; Hawkins, Alexandra; Essex, Elizabeth; Bowman, Valerie St. Martin’s (413 pp.) $7.99 paper | Sep. 30, 2014 978-1-250-06056-3 An anthology of four short historical romances sends up the holiday season with a touch of mischief, mistletoe and Christmas magic.

In Enoch’s “One Hot Scot,” when a Highlander rescues an English lady who’s been kidnapped by a rival clan, he risks his safety to help her, not realizing he’s risking his heart by spending time with her.

The Christmas connection is a bit of a stretch, but the amiable characters and sensual storyline—including the hero’s clever outmaneuvering of the villain—win the reader over. In Hawkins’ “Once Upon A Christmas Scandal,” Lady Ellen is mortified and angry when her father increases her dowry to win her a husband, then confused when Lord Swainsbury finagles his way into their holiday party under false pretenses. He seems like her perfect match, but it’s clear he’s hiding something, so are his attentions to be believed? A hint of a housebound mystery spices up this warm yet sexy romance. In Essex’s “The Scandal Before Christmas,” a naval lieutenant must find a wife before his loathsome father forces him to marry his own choice. A colleague’s docile and shy spinster daughter seems like a perfect choice, and when a snowstorm forces them together, he finds himself falling for the intelligent, passionate woman emerging from beneath her dowdy exterior. There’s a satisfying plain-Jane storyline with the added bonus of outsmarting the insufferable father. Bowman’s “It Happened Under the Mistletoe” offers a magical cat, a Regency meet-cute in a closet, and a duke and an heiress who are perfect for each other, though they’re convinced they aren’t—with a bit too much emotional hand-wringing on her part, which detracts slightly from the story’s overall charm. Historical romance anthologies are as much a part of the Christmas season for some readers as trees and stockings, and this is a fun collection they’ll appreciate.

As warm, sweet and sexy as a quick kiss under the mistletoe.

ALL BROKE DOWN

Carmack, Cora Morrow/HarperCollins (320 pp.) $13.99 paper | Oct. 28, 2014 978-0-06-232622-5 Local football star Silas Moore meets Dylan Brenner in jail, of all places, but while she’s fighting lost causes, he’s plain fighting—his ex-best friend, his teammates and, apparently, a major attraction to Dylan; could she be the girl to save him, and will he let her?

Dylan is from the right side of the tracks, or at least she was adopted into it. A regular attendee at protests and defender of righteous causes, she’s a little surprised when she crosses a line and gets arrested. But landing in jail gives her the opportunity to meet Silas, one of the stars of the famous Rusk football team, who’s in jail after a bar fight. She has to admit she’s drawn to him. Not only is he gorgeous, but she relates to his compelling restlessness. Since her longtime boyfriend recently broke up with her, she’s been at odds with a few things in her life, but meeting Silas, seems to move her in a new direction.

Her wealthy parents expect her to get back with her socially approved ex and are wary of her social consciousness. Silas is from the wrong side of the tracks himself and has felt a little adrift since his ex–best friend got kicked off the team. Starting the season in trouble hasn’t endeared him to his coach or his team, and spending time with Dylan makes him feel grounded, despite the taut sexual tension between them. However, her 66

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HOW TO BAKE A MAN

in a world that insists on tearing them apart, yet even as their desire for each other continues unabated, the cost of being together takes its toll, with drastic consequences for both of them. Jones (Four Sisters, All Queens, 2012, etc.) weaves history and passion in a tale full of emotional heft that questions what it means to truly love someone. At times her writing is overly lush, and she focuses on painting a maelstrom of emotions rather than building up the events that created those emotions. Abelard and Heloise are rushed into a courtship before the reader has a firm understanding of who they are, yet Jones’ characterization is complex and subtle. In the way of all lovers who love without knowing if they have a future together, Abelard’s and Heloise’s motivations keep changing, leaving the reader wondering what will happen next.

Readers will push to the end determined to find out if there never was a tale of more woe than that of Heloise and her Abelard, or if, for once, true love is able to triumph over everything that would see it destroyed.

Inclán, Jessica Barksdale Ghostwoods Books (256 pp.) $13.99 paper | Oct. 21, 2014 978-0-957627-15-4

In this frothy, food-filled contemporary romance by Inclán (The Beautiful Being, 2012, etc.), the way to the heart is indeed through the stomach.

Desperate for a new direction in life, 27-year-old Becca Muchmore abruptly quits grad school and starts a baking business in San Francisco. This venture introduces her to a circle of customers who become potential friends, lovers and enemies. In particular, she develops an instant crush on preppy lawyer Jeff and encounters opposition from Jennifer, his beautiful but nasty lawyer girlfriend. Fortunately, Becca’s baking skills are so astonishing that everyone clamors for more. She hires her sexy neighbor Sal as her assistant, relying on his charm, good humor and uncanny ability to find parking to expand her business. At the same time, she chases Jeff and spies on Jennifer in an effort to win the love she assumes she wants. In an effort to address deeper issues, Inclán uses a single coincidence as a major theme: Sweet Becca is apparently the spitting image of mean Jennifer. However, this quirk is only intermittently thought noticeable or significant by most characters and in the end seems an unnecessary gimmick. The stock characters—including the boy next door, the perky secretary and the critical mother—break no new ground.

It’s clear to the reader from the outset who belongs with whom, and getting to the happy ending requires tolerance for the cast’s unsurprising foibles. However, for readers desiring a more immersive experience, the book does include recipes for each treat mentioned in the story.

There’s little to distinguish this novel, but it hits nearly all the notes it aims for, and there’s a tidy ending for those looking for a comfort read.

DIRTY ROWDY THING

Lauren, Christina Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster (336 pp.) $16.00 paper | Nov. 4, 2014 978-1-4767-7796-2 The pseudonymous writing duo behind Beautiful Bastard (2013) continues the Wild Seasons series with a sequel that is both dirty and rowdy.

After a quickie wedding in Vegas, Finn Roberts and Harlow Vega have gone their separate ways despite the explosive chemistry they shared. While Finn struggles to keep his family’s Vancouver fishing business afloat, rich girl Harlow is paying her dues as an intern at NBC’s San Diego headquarters. Neither of them is ready for anything serious, but when a friend’s comic-book store opening brings Finn to Harlow’s neighborhood, they can’t deny their lingering feelings for long. Many love scenes later (most involving Finn tying Harlow up with rope), they learn that communication is the foundation of a good relationship when Finn discovers that Harlow’s mother has cancer and Harlow learns that Finn may have to star in a reality series to save his company. In addition to casual sex, the two distract themselves from more serious life issues with authentic regional fun involving comic books and craft beers with their friends, who make for hilarious secondary characters.

Fans will appreciate that Mia and Ansel, who were the focus of Book 1, are still together when they all meet up at the grand opening. In a story that is easily devoured in one sitting, the details are sparse but spot-on—“Apparently there are a lot of nerds in San Diego,” notes Finn—and witty dialogue carries the plot swiftly to a happy ending.

The romance unfolds like a series of drunken text messages, which, perhaps surprisingly, is not a bad thing.

THE SHARP HOOK OF LOVE

Jones, Sherry Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster (384 pp.) $16.00 paper | Oct. 7, 2014 978-1-4516-8479-7

Heloise d’Argenteuil is a brilliant scholar, and Pierre Abelard is a philosopher whose work titillates all of Paris.

When Abelard is hired to tutor Heloise, it’s the beginning of an allconsuming and forbidden love affair that could cost them everything. So begins an epic romance based on the original letters between the famous 12th-century lovers. While their love flares and burns like a fabulous Roman candle, they are pitted against the strict rules of Parisian society, a wrathful uncle and their own teeming ambitions. They cling together |

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“Macomber spins another sweet, warmhearted holiday tale that will be as comforting to her fans as hot chocolate on Christmas morning.” from mr. miracle

MR. MIRACLE A Christmas Novel Macomber, Debbie Ballantine (272 pp.) $18.00 | Oct. 7, 2014 978-0-553-39115-2

A guardian angel is sent to Earth as a professor charged with helping his students get their lives in order—especially Addie, who’s returned to her hometown to make a fresh start and maybe even

find love.

Harry Mills has wanted an Earth assignment for as long as he can remember, and now that he has one—as a community college English professor over the holiday term—he’s ready for anything. Or so he thinks. Book smart and slightly smug, he’ll be taken down a peg or two when he realizes that human interactions and earthly temptations are far more complicated than they seem from a celestial perspective. Still, his angelic heart is in the right place, and despite a few missteps that bring some unwanted attention—from an attractive co-worker on the prowl, an overly fussy by-the-book college president and a venal security guard—Harry enjoys his work. His literature class studies Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, the quintessential story of holiday miracles and second chances, which resonates with his students, who include Danny, a young ex-con; Andrew, a nervous veteran suffering from PTSD; and Addie, his true assignment, a young woman who suffers from dyslexia and self-doubt but wants to finally get a degree and pursue a career. Harry’s gentle nudge toward forgiveness and compassion might apply to Addie’s personal life as well. After all, Erich, the neighbor she grew up with and who crushed her heart with his teenage meanspiritedness, needs her help after a debilitating accident. Maybe it’s the season to overcome old grudges and open the way to new beginnings—and true love.

Macomber spins another sweet, warmhearted holiday tale that will be as comforting to her fans as hot chocolate on Christmas morning.

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nonfiction THE MAP OF HEAVEN How Science, Religion, and Ordinary People Are Proving the Afterlife

These titles earned the Kirkus Star: WHY WE LOST by Daniel P. Bolger.....................................................74

Alexander, Eben with Tompkins, Ptolemy Simon & Schuster (224 pp.) $21.99 | Nov. 4, 2014 978-1-4767-6639-3

RUMOURS OF GLORY by Bruce Cockburn.........................................76 WATERLOO by Gordon Corrigan........................................................79 THE HUNDRED YEARS WAR by David Green..................................87 CITIES OF EMPIRE by Tristram Hunt.................................................91 THE ART OF STILLNESS by Pico Iyer................................................ 92 LIVES IN RUINS by Marilyn Johnson................................................ 94 WHY DID THE CHICKEN CROSS THE WORLD?

by Andrew Lawler............................................................................... 98 THE BIRTH OF A NATION by Dick Lehr........................................... 99 DE NIRO by Shawn Levy.................................................................... 99 MAN ALIVE by Thomas Page McBee................................................ 104 NOTHING IS TRUE AND EVERYTHING IS POSSIBLE

by Peter Pomerantsev..........................................................................108 THE RESILIENCE DIVIDEND by Judith Rodin................................110 GOD’LL CUT YOU DOWN by John Safran........................................ 113 THE UNIVERSAL TONE by Carlos Santana..................................... 113 AMERICA’S PASTOR by Grant Wacker.............................................119 THE ACCIDENTAL SUPERPOWER by Peter Zeihan........................ 121

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An afterlife proponent expounds upon the existence of heaven.

Academic neurosurgeon Alexander (Proof of Heaven: A Journey into the Afterlife, 2012) further mines the metaphysical terrain he claims to have encountered while in a coma in 2008 as well as the transformational effects it had on his mental and spiritual perceptions. With generous references to the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle, the author also includes theories from an array of historic physicists and scientists, along with supportive letters and stories from people who endured near-death experiences and emerged psychologically transformed. Most support his belief in the existence of “a series of supraphysical realms” beyond the physical plane, which he believes carries answers to our true origins and our future. Alexander believes all earthbound human beings possess latent suppressed memories of visiting a heavenly dominion, and both belief and acceptance will spiritually usher us to return to it. Doing so, he writes, also requires a basic understanding of a series of complimentary, self-explanatory “gifts”: knowledge, meaning, vision, strength, belonging, joy and hope.

Though neuroscience is Alexander’s field, his newly enhanced spirituality and belief in the preternatural are firmly asserted throughout a text written with assertive yet compassionate prose. An optimistic visionary, the author believes the coming era will be challenging, tarnished with the kind of anxious concern that could very well be mitigated by a belief in heaven and the afterlife. Skeptics will have a field day with the author’s frequently nebulous correlations and real-life anecdotes of post-mortem butterflies and levitating orbs, but Alexander does provide a larger concept of collective consciousness moving souls onward toward an otherworldly plane where serenity, compassion and goodness prevail. However, Alexander argues, courage, a true heart and an open mind are required to appreciate these gifts.

Though saddled with the burden of tangible proof, Alexander’s impassioned report nevertheless forms a buoyant testimonial.

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behind the scenes at the 2014 kirkus prize for nonfiction Scintillating discussions. Heated arguments. Passionate pleading. Yelling and crying. Frantic emails and phone calls.

Horse-trading. Arm wrestling. Knife fights. Death threats—all that and more (well, maybe not all), courtesy of our esteemed judges for the inaugural 2014 Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction.

On Page 1, you can see in our editor’s note the titles and authors of the six exemplary nonfiction books that have been named as the finalists for the 2014 Prize.

Congratulations to them! What you won’t see in our editor’s note is how simultaneously difficult and enlightening the process was to name those finalists.

Our judges evaluated more than 200 books this year, all of which, according to our criteria, received starred reviews from Kirkus in the past year. Given that all of them were outstanding in their own ways, choosing only six was understandably inspiring and nerve-wracking. It required constant discussion among the judges and involved frequent reshuffling of the group’s top 10, top 20 and beyond. In fact, among the dozens of excellent books that didn’t quite make the cut were new works by such stalwart nonfiction practitioners as Hampton Sides, Jill Lepore, Lawrence Wright, Walter Isaacson, Karen Armstrong, Diane Ackerman, Rick Perlstein, David Brion Davis, Greg Grandin, Frances Mayes, Greil Marcus and Howard Blum.

All of those books deserve—and have received or will receive—their own accolades, but I must say that I am extremely proud of the impressive list our judges have created in this first year of our competition. Not only are each of the books extraordinary examples of nonfiction that will prove to be go-to texts even many years from now, but they also represent a diverse array of topics, including graphic memoir, environmental science, economic history, true crime, law, natural history, biography and the history of science. All of the finalists are viable candidates to take home the honor, and I look forward to the announcement of the first annual Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction on Oct. 23. —E.L.

THE GOOD SON JFK Jr. and the Mother He Loved

Andersen, Christopher Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster (320 pp.) $27.00 | Oct. 28, 2014 978-1-4767-7556-2 Best-selling biographer Andersen (These Few Precious Days: The Final Year of Jack with Jackie, 2013, etc.) chronicles John F. Kennedy Jr.’s too-brief life and the complex relationship he shared with his beautiful, enigmatic mother, Jacqueline.

As the only son of John and Jackie Kennedy, the most “glamorous couple” of their generation, JFK Jr. came into the world burdened by expectations. JFK hoped his son would one day enter politics; at the same time, though, he also expressed a desire that John Jr. “would do whatever [made] him happy.”

Ultimately, though, it would be his widow, Jackie, who influenced their son the most. She, too, wanted him to forge his own path. But she also had a keen sense of herself as the keeper of her husband’s legacy and that John Jr. would one day become the Kennedy family standard-bearer. A devoted mother, Jackie fought to protect both her children from the media attention that followed them into their lives as private citizens. She also did everything she could to keep JFK’s memory alive in her son. In the meantime, Jr. developed a passion for the stage. But under pressure from Jackie, he abandoned his dream to study acting. Still, he never left the spotlight and went on to have high-profile affairs—of which his mother wholeheartedly disapproved—with celebrities like Madonna and Daryl Hannah.

He struggled to find his political identity and fulfill his mother’s wishes for him through ventures like the short-lived poppolitical magazine George. In the end, though, he never quite found his career footing. Three years before his tragic death at age 38, John Jr. married Carolyn Bessette, who mirrored Jackie in her patrician bearing, stylishness and need for control. Sensitive and astute, Andersen’s book offers an intriguing look at a fraught mother-son dynamic that, years after the deaths of both Jackie and John Jr., still has the power to mesmerize.

An intimate and compelling look at “the most brilliant star in the Kennedy firmament.”

Eric Liebetrau is the nonfiction and managing editor at Kirkus Reviews.

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“A fresh study of the deeply prescient thought of this visionary journalist, playwright and founding Zionist.” from herzl’s vision

THE GREATEST KNIGHT The Remarkable Life of William Marshal, the Power Behind Five English Thrones

Asbridge, Thomas Ecco/HarperCollins (416 pp.) $27.99 | Dec. 2, 2014 978-0-06-226205-9

Biography of William Marshal (11461219), Earl of Pembroke, the epitome of medieval chivalry, who battled for great kings (Henry II, Richard the Lionheart) and the not-so-great (Henry III).

Marshal’s reputation stems from a fulsome epic poem commissioned after his death (“In its pages William almost became the living embodiment of the mythical Arthurian knight, Lancelot”), which thrilled scholars when it turned up in 1861.

Acknowledging its value as well as its bias—it presented its hero “as the perfect knight”—Asbridge (Medieval History/Univ. of London; The Crusades: The Authoritative History of the War for the Holy Land, 2010) delivers an intensively researched but lucid portrait of a knight who triumphed in an age much nastier than that of Arthur’s mythical kingdom. Son of a minor noble, Marshal matured in a time when England still ruled much of France.

After training in the household of a great Norman magnate, he distinguished himself in tournaments, which were exceedingly popular during the day. These were not the formal jousts that proliferated in later centuries but rather brutal battles between groups of knights whose winners ransomed surviving losers.

After serving Eleanor of Aquitaine, Marshal joined the court of her estranged husband, Henry II, where he prospered, fought for but occasionally betrayed Henry and his successors, and ended life as England’s most powerful royal retainer (“guardian of the realm”). Henry II passed much of his reign fighting the French, when he wasn’t fighting one of three ambitious sons anxious to unseat him. Matters did not improve after Henry’s death, so Marshal’s career comes across as a relentless series of intrigues, battles, atrocities, truces quickly broken, internal revolts and treason that often included Marshal for reasons the author must guess because historical evidence is lacking.

A valuable biography of an important figure in a distant, violent, barely comprehensible era.

This is not an intimate look at Theodor Herzl’s life (18601904) but rather a knowledgeable exploration of the evolution of his thought about the establishment of a Jewish state. Avineri (Political Science/Hebrew Univ. of Jerusalem; Moses Hess: The Holy History of Mankind and Other Writings, 2005, etc.) jumps right to the quick: The Hungarian-born, German-speaking Jewish editor for the Viennese Neue Freie Presse was not the first to advocate for a Jewish nation-state; Moses Hess and Leo Pinsker had notably preceded him (though Herzl did not read either of their works until later). In the latter decades of the 19th century, when Herzl came of age, Jews had moved from the margins of Western and Central European society to the pinnacles of achievement in the professions and arts. Yet their very success “was seen as threatening,” especially in German-speaking lands, leading to the first tremors of anti-Semitism as early as 1817. As a former law student, Herzl wrote firsthand on these persistent outbreaks of anti-Semitism—e.g., the scandals surrounding the Panama Canal and the Dreyfus Affair. However, contrary to popular mythology regarding Herzl’s life, it was his reading of Eugen Duhring’s 1881 essay, “The Jewish Question as

HERZL’S VISION Theodor Herzl and the Foundation of the Jewish State

Avineri, Shlomo BlueBridge (288 pp.) $22.95 | Nov. 11, 2014 978-1-933346-98-4

A fresh study of the deeply prescient thought of this visionary journalist, playwright and founding Zionist. |

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a Racial, Moral, and Cultural Issue,” which outlined the inferiority of Jews, that convinced Herzl of the failure of Jewish emancipation. Influenced by the currents of nationalism and worried about the huge Jewish population within a disintegrating Austro-Hungarian regime, Herzl wrote the enormously influential pamphlet The Jewish State (1896) and became, overnight, a politician for a Jewish homeland, galvanizing the Jewish Congress in Basel. Avineri briefly sketches how Herzl tirelessly rallied leaders from the highest echelons by flattering, bribing and cajoling—in an astonishingly short period of time.

Rigorous research gathered in a succinct presentation renders this an excellent resource.

MERLIN STONE REMEMBERED Her Life and Works

Axelrod, David B.; Thomas, Carol F.; Schneir, Lenny Llewellyn (384 pp.) $21.99 paper | Dec. 8, 2014 978-0-7387-4091-1

A fascinating though fragmented look at the extraordinary life of visionary feminist Merlin Stone (1931-2011).

Perhaps a single point of view is not sufficient to capture the uncompromising life of the feminist author, poet and sculptor. This may be why her life partner, Writers Unlimited Agency founder Schneir (Gambling Collectibles: A Sure Winner, 1993), worked with two co-authors—poet, author and teacher Axelrod and longtime women’s studies professor Thomas—to create this collection of writing that celebrates her life and work. This is not an in-depth, critical look at Stone’s work, which includes the seminal When God Was a Woman (1976) and Ancient Mirrors of Womanhood (1984), but rather a sampler that hits the high notes. Schneir’s heartfelt memories of his life with Stone segue into excerpts from her work, some of it previously unpublished, with largely complimentary commentary by Axelrod, Thomas and others. This then blends in with photographs of Stone’s sculptures, letters from adoring fans, a remembrance from Stone’s daughter, and a gallery of portraits and memorabilia, making the narrative read like a scrapbook. Combining scholarly content and personal memories to this extent risks alienating the audience for either, though it accurately conveys the sense that Stone was not easily categorized. There is potential for two volumes here: an expanded memoir that elaborates on Schneir’s dayto-day life with Stone and a more extensive volume with room for critics of Stone’s writings. As is, the single volume does provide personal insights that feminist scholars may be unfamiliar with, as well as a call for newcomers to explore the varied work of this visionary author and artist.

Scholarship or scrapbook? This memoir with a mission suffers from an identity crisis.

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OF ALL THE GIN JOINTS

Bailey, Mark Illus. by Hemingway, Edward Algonquin (192 pp.) $21.95 | Sep. 30, 2014 978-1-56512-593-3

A toper’s guide to booze and its discontents in the film mecca that is Los Angeles.

Sure, Bogart drank—and W.C. Fields and Jackie Gleason, by the gallon. But Clara Bow, Mary Pickford, Veronica Lake? Yep, they swilled alcohol as if there were no tomorrow and no consequence—and, at times, as if there were no laws against it. Screenwriter Bailey and artist Hemingway (Hemingway & Bailey’s Bartending Guide to Great American Writers, 2006) team up to profile some of Tinseltown’s most notorious drinkers (and a few secret tipplers as well), along with the watering holes they favored, from the Polo Lounge to Ciro’s and a few lesser-known saloons in less fashionable districts. They write in the same style that fuels such tellalls as Hollywood Babylon and Mommy Dearest: Sure, Errol Flynn often played a scamp, but who knew that he was so downright awful in real life? Unfortunately, Bailey brings too little new information to the table, though when he does, it’s a revelation. The packaging, too, is pleasant enough, with its abundant sidebars, recipes—if you’re going to read the book, you might as well learn how to make simple syrup, as well—and caricatures.

Bailey’s yarns, lasting about a beer apiece, are engaging enough as well and sometimes shocking to boot—it rattles our image of the man, for instance, to learn that sweet Stan Laurel, a constant drunk who put down “a ton of whiskey,” once threatened to bury his wife alive. Overall, the book is pleasantly enjoyable but dispensable.

If you have a hipster’s need to drink your way through film history in the footsteps of Bogey and Bacall or just want to hit all of LA’s historic hotspots or perhaps are just taking your liver out for a thorough road test under the swaying palms, then this is your vade mecum. Otherwise, stick to Kenneth Anger or maybe Barton Fink.

GAY BERLIN Birthplace of a Modern Identity

Beachy, Robert Knopf (336 pp.) $27.95 | Nov. 20, 2014 978-0-307-27210-2

An elucidating, somewhat startling study of how early German tolerance and liberalism encouraged homosexual expression.

Anti-sodomy laws were unevenly applied in the German confederation of states before imperial unification in 1871. In this singular, persuasive work, Beachy (Goucher Coll.; Soul of Commerce: Credit, Property, and Politics in Leipzig, 1750-1840, 2005, |

etc.) traces the legal and medical precedents to increased tolerance of same-sex love, especially in Berlin before 1933. Despite the recommendation by medical experts against the archaic anti-sodomy statue (they argued that “male-male sexual relations” were “no more injurious than other forms [of illicit sexuality]”), the law was upheld in the Prussian-led unification, largely due to a horrific assault in the Invalidenpark, which swayed public opinion. Nonetheless, a lawyer who had been advocating for same-sex rights through his writings, first anonymously and under threat of scandal, then by his real name, Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, momentously addressed the Association of Jurists in Munich in 1867, protesting the anti-sodomy laws. Part of the stupendous reach of Ulrichs’ writings on homosexuals was due to the lax censorship laws of the Leipzig publishers, “who dominated the German-language book trade.” Ulrichs’ work would later inspire Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld in the founding of the Scientific Humanitarian Committee in Berlin—what Beachy calls the first homosexual rights organization. Moreover, in Berlin, the police commissioner Leopold von MeerscheidtHullessem took a rather laissez faire enforcement policy toward what came to be at century’s end a proliferation of homosexual bars and drag costume balls (“homosexual” being a neologism coined by another German journalist and activist, Karl-Maria Kertbeny in 1869). These events were often used for tours so that the city became a kind of “laboratory of sexuality.” Beachy looks at the roles of blackmail and criminality, the rise of homoerotic youth groups in Weimar Germany and an accompanying anti-Semitic reaction.

A brave new work of compelling research. (16 pages of photos)

EMPIRE OF COTTON A Global History Beckert, Sven Knopf (656 pp.) $35.00 | Dec. 2, 2014 978-0-375-41414-5

Beckert (History/Harvard Univ.; The Monied Metropolis: New York City and the Consolidation of the American Bourgeoisie, 1850-1896, 2001) writes convincingly of cotton as the impetus for a world-system

kind of capitalism.

Cotton, of course, has been grown and worked for millennia, long before the development of capitalism. As the author observes, initially cotton required efforts so labor-intensive that cotton goods had outsized value: “Rulers everywhere demanded cotton cloth as tribute or taxes, and indeed it might be said that cotton was present at the birth of political economy as such.” The shift in the Industrial Revolution to mass production removed some of the allure and value, moving cotton from household to factory and shifting cultivation from small plots to large plantations—and, importantly, forging international links among banks, markets, suppliers and shippers around the world. In one case study, Beckert weaves the stories of towns in |

the Black Forest of Germany, the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico and the American South into a neat fabric. Market production meant the development of new systems of banking and credit, thus remaking the world of finance, with European credit in particular being instrumental in furthering the development of the slave economy in the United States. Beckert’s narrative sometimes threatens to grind to a halt amid an overabundance of detail, but his conclusions and asides are fascinating—as when, for example, he puts the lie to the idea that ours is an age of deindustrialization “when exactly the opposite is true, as the greatest wave of industrialization ever has overtaken the globe.”

In that light, his close-up study of the cotton economy is a valuable model for the study of capitalism generally, an economic system in which slavery and colonialism were not outliers but instead integral to the whole.

Of narrower interest than Monied Metropolis but a valuable contribution all the same.

AMERICA 1844 Religious Fervor, Westward Expansion, and the Presidential Election that Transformed the Nation Bicknell, John Chicago Review (320 pp.) $26.95 | Nov. 1, 2014 978-1-61373-010-2

Longtime political journalist Bicknell (co-editor: Politics in America 2012, 2011) presents a diverting snapshot of America in 1844.

It was a time of great enthusiasms, some good, some not.

Philadelphia was rocked twice by nativist riots against Irish Catholics. The followers of William Miller prepared to welcome Christ’s return to Earth, first in March, then in October, with disappointing results. John C. Fremont returned from an exploratory mission to Oregon and California as parties of settlers headed West from Missouri; Bicknell follows one of these, chronicling one family’s tribulations on the journey. Political passions raged in this presidential election year, particularly over the proposed annexation of the Republic of Texas, an issue that provoked controversies over the territorial expansion of slavery and the likelihood of war with Mexico. The Whigs chose Henry Clay as their nominee, replacing the unpopular incumbent John Tyler; Clay proceeded to shoot himself in the foot repeatedly with ill-conceived statements fudging his position on Texas.

The pro-annexation dark horse James K. Polk emerged with the Democrats’ nomination after a protracted convention battle reported in real time over Morse’s new telegraph. The Mormon prophet Joseph Smith was also a candidate but was murdered by a mob in jail. Bicknell tells all these stories and more with enthusiasm, exceptional narrative skills and sound historical judgment. Ultimately, however, the events of this rather ordinary year never cohere into a thematic whole, a sense that the events unique to 1844 really made much of a difference. The problems of the Millerites and Mormons affected only a few, kirkus.com

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“With vigorous, no-nonsense prose and an impressive clarity of vision, this general does not mince blame in this chronicle of failure.” from why we lost

WHY WE LOST A General’s Inside Account of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars

and resolution of the Texas issue was deferred to another day.

While a Clay presidency would have taken the country down a very different path, Bicknell concedes that Polk’s victory did not result from a decisive turning point in national attitudes but happened largely because Clay just wasn’t a very good candidate.

An entertaining account of a single year of unexceptional significance.

BLEEDING ORANGE Fifty Years of Blind Referees, Screaming Fans, Beasts of the East, and Syracuse Basketball

Boeheim, Jim with McCallum, Jack Harper/HarperCollins (320 pp.) $27.99 | Nov. 4, 2014 978-0-06-231664-6

An autobiography from a legendary coaching lifer.

In 1962, Boeheim (b. 1944), a native of tiny Lyons, New York, walked on to the Syracuse University basketball team as a lightly touted freshman, eventually earning a scholarship. In the fall of 2014, he will begin his 39th season as head coach of the Orange.

In 2003, Boeheim won the national championship after several near misses, and in 2006, he was elected to the coaches’ wing of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. Only Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski has more wins in the history of Division I. In this memoir, Boeheim’s voice rings through clearly, a tribute to both the coach and to his co-author, McCallum, a respected veteran basketball writer (Dream Team: How Michael, Magic, Larry, Charles, and the Greatest Team of All Time Conquered the World and Changed the Game of Basketball Forever, 2012, etc.).

Boeheim keeps his focus on the college game, its evolution and his experience as the most visible person at Syracuse, although he shares relevant details of his personal biography as well. Basketball junkies will especially value the coach’s insights. Every two or three chapters, Boeheim breaks up the narrative with one of nine multipage “coaches notes” from the 2013-2014 season; these provide additional insight into Boeheim’s passion and preparation as well as his philosophies in dealing with players, officials, and peers on and off the court. Syracuse was an inaugural member of the Big East Conference that helped to transform college basketball in the 1980s, highlighting a tough, hard-fought style of play and larger-than-life coaching personalities, of which Boeheim was one of the more prominent. The tales from the Big East in its heyday mark some of the highlights of the book, as do his coaching insights.

Sometimes accused of being a complainer on the court, Boeheim comes across as likable in this readable, thoughtful book about coaching college basketball.

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Bolger, Daniel P. Eamon Dolan/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (544 pp.) $28.00 | Nov. 11, 2014 978-0-544-37048-7

A former commander of advisory teams in Iraq and Afghanistan offers historical perspective and a forthright breakdown of the failure of those conflicts.

A retired lieutenant general with 35 years in the U.S. Army and various commands in the Middle East over the last decade, Bolger admits he was “low[er] down on the food chain” but present enough to observe how “key decisions were made, delayed or avoided.” In sharp, plainspoken prose, he sets out the scenarios, from the first victorious Gulf War against Saddam Hussein to the beleaguered U.S. military drawdown in Afghanistan in June 2013. Bolger characterizes the generals involved—e.g., comparing each to a historical counterpart, such as David Petraeus to the “innovative yet overly ambitious” Douglas MacArthur and himself to “Vinegar Joe” Stilwell, who “told it like it was” (and got sent home for it)—and gives a clear sense of what the American forces possessed to their advantage: namely, an excellent volunteer military, top-notch military intelligence and workable joint operations. Bolger also explores what hindered them, including an amorphous enemy and a sense of damning hubris. The generals might have congratulated themselves on beating the “Vietnam syndrome,” but some of the same issues haunted the current Middle East crises—e.g., who was the enemy? “Defining the enemy defined the war,” writes Bolger, and from the Sunni insurgents to the Taliban to al-Qaida to the “green-on-blue turncoats,” the guerilla enemy retreated, changed and regrouped. Bolger does a fine job of delineating the technical aspects of military workings (while making good fun of the euphemistic names of the various operations labeled by the “guys in the Pentagon basement”) and candidly describes America’s efforts after a decade of attrition as “global containment of Islamic threats.”

With vigorous, no-nonsense prose and an impressive clarity of vision, this general does not mince blame in this chronicle of failure.

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SECOND AVENUE CAPER When Goodfellas, Divas, and Dealers Plotted Against the Plague

Brabner, Joyce Illus. by Zingarelli, Mark Hill and Wang/Farrar, Straus and Giroux (160 pp.) $22.00 | Nov. 18, 2014 978-0-8090-3553-3 A graphic memoir detailing a pot-dealing scheme that helped finance treatment for those dying from AIDS in the early days before the epidemic even had that name.

Both the title and the format suggest the humorous spirit of irreverence, though the subject is deadly serious. The author and the male nurse who is the protagonist were part of “a small tight-knit outsider community” in New York City at a time when AIDS was mainly a scary rumor and the entire cultural context was different. “So what’s the difference between a comic book and a graphic novel?” one of the group asked Brabner, wife of the late Harvey Pekar, whose deadpan, matter-of-fact sensibility she seems to share. “One is spaghetti. Sometimes Spaghettios. The other is pasta,” she replied. During a period when gay life was marginalized and grant money went elsewhere, a small conspiracy decided to fund itself through “the Colombian Arts Council Grant,” a euphemism for smuggling high-grade marijuana for profits that could subsidize live performances and other art projects. Yet with the emergence of the virus, the profits started to serve a different purpose: to buy and smuggle different drugs, illegal and experimental but available in Mexico.

So much was trial and error back then, the testing and the treatment, that much of what they brought back was more shortterm benefit than long-term cure. “We sold weed at premium prices to the healthy to support our friends however we could,” writes the author. “And gave it away free to the sick. It helped with the pain and nausea.” The Robin Hood band proved to be the vanguard in a battle that belatedly received mainstream support, not only because it was too widespread to ignore, but “because somebody’s starting to realize this isn’t just a queer disease.” But this is a story of early warning, recognition and action.

The art of cartoonist Zingarelli underscores the tone of the text.

CHRIST ACTUALLY The Son of God for the Secular Age

The author takes as his muse Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s World War II–era statement: “What is bothering me incessantly is the question—Who Christ actually is for us today?” Looking at Jesus through the lenses of the Holocaust and the atomic bomb, Carroll discerns a different image than much of Christian history has before. Above all else, he asserts, Christ must be seen as and understood as a Jew. Though a seemingly obvious statement, the author explains at length how Christians have failed to recognize Christ’s Jewishness through time—or at least not taken it seriously. Exploring the Gospels as storytelling, not as history, Carroll describes a man who was seen by many as the fulfillment of Jewish hopes in his own time, while he was recorded as breaking with Jewish intransigence in later Scripture. The author explains that the Jesus Christ of Christendom was remembered in the wake of two grand disappointments: the lack of his immediate return and the destruction of the Temple. Given this, his followers adapted, seeing him as the embodiment of a new temple and his church as the kingdom of God on Earth.

As usual, Carroll’s writing is highly erudite; reading him is an educational experience in itself. Traditionalists will balk at his

“Engrossing, sensitive and humorous — a bighearted winner.”

–Kirkus Reviews The Mousehouse Years is a graphic memoir set primarily in the slums of Toronto in the early sixties. It tells the turbulent story of a dysfunctional romance, a single mother raising six children and a childhood filled with adversity and adventure.

The Mousehouse Years

Carroll, James Viking (368 pp.) $30.00 | Nov. 18, 2014 978-0-670-78603-9

A Graphic Memoir by Velvet Haney For distribution please contact the publisher, Jim Hilborn 416-345-9403 or james@hilborn.com

To understand Jesus today, writes novelist and religion expert Carroll (Warburg in Rome, 2014, etc.), he must first be understood as a Jew. |

Author’s website: velvethaney.com ISBN: 978-1-927375-16-7 • 368 pages 6.3”x 9.5” Hardcover • Retail Price: $29

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“The Canadian folk/rock singer-songwriter recalls a nomadic life spent witnessing the social and political crises of our time through song.” from rumours of glory

acceptance of some modernist theories, however. For instance, he finds it plausible that Jesus was a disciple of John the Baptist and goes on to argue that, like other people, Jesus was “defined by...the moral lapses that would have made real the need for repentance that brought him to John.” Even the author’s conclusion that “we are here less to believe in Jesus than to imitate him” will raise some eyebrows.

An in-depth, thought-provoking challenge to two millennia of Christian interpretation.

RIVER OF INK Literature, History, Art

Christensen, Thomas Counterpoint (320 pp.) $35.00 | Dec. 16, 2014 978-1-61902-426-7

Assorted essays about people, places and ideas.

Editor, publisher and blogger Christensen (1616: The World in Motion, 2012, etc.) intends each essay to make “sense of a little corner of things, each one starting from a different thread of the fabric of everything.” That amorphous goal fails to provide coherence for the collection, which contains various writings: histories, author profiles, book reviews, and political and cultural commentary. Christensen organizes the essays by continent. The pieces on West Asia are linked by the theme of cultural repression: the Taliban’s destruction of artworks, for example, and the title essay, which refers to the Mongol siege of Baghdad in 1258, when the contents of the Grand Library were dumped into the Tigris. “For six months,” the author writes, “...the waters of the Tigris flowed black from the ink of the books.” Other geographical sections, though, contain essays that are only tenuously connected to place. “Australia, Southeast Asia,” for example, contains two essays: a profile of the Australian writer Ethel Richardson, who wrote under the pseudonym Henry Handel Richardson, and a brief homage to Thai artist Montien Boonma, whose installation House of Hope the author admires. In the section on Europe, Christensen writes about the Spanish poet Jose Angel Valente, writers Lewis Carroll and Horace Walpole, Celine’s love of dance, and Johannes Kepler.

The author writes that since he is not a scholar, readers should not expect essays to support an argument, but some pieces (on Chinese history, for one) read like Wikipedia entries and beg for a theme. Nevertheless, although the collection is diffuse, Christensen’s lively curiosity informs several quirky and engrossing essays: “Journeys of the Iron Man” documents how a mid-19thcentury iron statue commissioned by an African king came to be “branded a masterpiece of world art,” and “Sadakichi and America” brings to light the life and multiple identities of a slippery character well-known in avant-garde circles.

An uneven collection enlivened by some bright spots.

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BROTHAS BE, YO LIKE GEORGE, AIN’T THAT FUNKIN’ KINDA HARD ON YOU? A Memoir

Clinton, George with Greenman, Ben Atria (400 pp.) $27.00 | Oct. 21, 2014 978-1-4767-5107-8

Uncle Jam’s funkadactic crusade continues in a book that, though less rollicking than a fan might expect, still kicks it.

“When I’m asked about something serious, I try to make jokes because deep down, I know that I don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about.” Thus says Clinton, the mastermind behind Parliament/Funkadelic, aka P-Funk, and the author of such classics as “Maggot Brain” and “The Electric Spanking of War Babies.”

It’s not exactly Socrates’ “I know only that I know nothing,” but Clinton is a born, if rough-speaking, philosopher, as when he allows that, though he’s not so inclined, he never minded playing with gay musicians: “I don’t give a fuck who he’s fucking. Can he drum?” Clinton, with a helpful hand from pop ghost Greenman (co-author of Questlove’s Mo’ Meta Blues, 2013), recounts coming up on gritty East Coast streets, where, in between working as a barber, he engaged in various felonious acts while seeking fame on the Motown funway. That changed with his “introduction to three important letters: L-S-D,” along with the recruitment of players such as Eddie Hazel and later William “Bootsy” Collins, who took R&B, mixed it with rock, turned it into funk, and then took the whole enterprise into outer space. (Clinton opens with an anecdote in which Mylar space suits figure prominently.)

Sadly—but fittingly, as it turns out—Clinton’s tale begins to limp halfway in, as acid-funk glory slowly begins to erode in the face of one lawsuit after another. He closes in the glow of a comfortable semiretirement tinged with a hint of sadness: “Kids today don’t know the difference between me and Snoop Dogg, or me and Stevie Wonder. Everybody who’s old is old.”

Though sometimes too slow and a touch, well, normal, Clinton’s memoir proves a treat for the many who love his work.

RUMOURS OF GLORY A Memoir Cockburn, Bruce HarperOne (544 pp.) $28.99 | Nov. 4, 2014 978-0-06-196912-6

The Canadian folk/rock singer-songwriter recalls a nomadic life spent witnessing the social and political crises of our time through song.

Cockburn (b. 1945) proves to be a natural storyteller in this debut, which begins with his shy, lonely childhood growing up in a comfortable Ottawa family and traces his rise as a celebrated guitarist who moved from 1960s |

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coffeehouses to concert halls to such hit recordings as “Wondering Where the Lions Are” (1980) and “If I Had a Rocket Launcher” (1984). Known for his eclectic musical tastes—jazz, rock, blues, reggae, folk, country—he entered the Canadian Music Hall of Fame in 2001. Writing with intelligence and candor, he tells how other artists—from Bob Dylan and Allen Ginsberg to Doris Lessing and Christian/occult author Charles Williams—influenced his thinking and work and sparked his lifelong activism against war, injustice and exploitation. Cockburn reflects at length on his keen interest in Christian mysticism and the “active benevolence” of the Bible, his view of his protest songs as cries of spiritual anguish, and his travels to troubled parts of Central America, Africa and elsewhere, where injustices touched him and turned into songs like “Rocket Launcher,” which he wrote after meeting with survivors of genocide against Mayan people by Guatemalan militias. “What doesn’t kill you makes for songs,” he writes. Long repressed and preferring “a covert life,” Cockburn writes that it took him many years to feel comfortable performing for audiences and to break out of the “bonds of isolation for the infinitely elastic bag of human absurdity.” He recalls his early unsuccessful marriage and subsequent intimate relationships with a series of strong women, including an unidentified “Madame X,” who helped him open up emotionally in the 1990s.

This unusually absorbing book will enthrall Cockburn fans and anyone interested in the life of a serious artist committed to his music and progressive causes.

HACKER, HOAXER, WHISTLEBLOWER, SPY The Many Faces of Anonymous

Coleman, Gabriella Verso (450 pp.) $26.95 | Nov. 4, 2014 978-1-78168-583-9

A fresh perspective on the covert, crusading Internet activist group Anonymous.

Coleman (Scientific and Technological Literacy/McGill Univ.; Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking, 2012), a cultural anthropologist and Internet authority, spent several increasingly immersive years researching the calculated tactics of the global Anonymous collective. She tracks the hacktivist association’s anarchic history from its nascent disruptive publicity stunts and trolled online raids through the “4chan” public chat boards in 2003, executed in the spirit of “lulz” (public schadenfreude). Though the group’s later, more pointed, collaborative machinations would attract the aggressive attention of the FBI, writes Coleman, their activities were still partly implemented in the same roguish, mischievous spirit. Though her treatment is permeated with buzzwords, initialisms and computer jargon, even Internet neophytes will find Coleman’s text to be a consistently fascinating ethnography, as she folds the politics of hacking and website breaching 78

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techniques into intriguing stories from the stealth campaigns of microcosmic networks like AnonOps and LulzSec (“a crew of renegade hackers who broke away from Anonymous and double as traveling minstrels”), among others. The author examines the ways the Anonymous collective seeks justice (or, at the very least, a mean-spirited chuckle) through the seizure and release of digitized, classified information or by challenging corporate conglomerates, as demonstrated by the Wikileaks–Chelsea Manning scandal and an early, synchronized attack on Scientology, both of which Coleman generously references. The author is particularly enthusiastic about Anonymous’ interior motivations and provides pages of interviews with infamous, incendiary trollers, snitches and hackers, verbatim bickering chat-room dialogue, and leaked documents. For such a frenzied collective defying easy categorization, Coleman’s diligent and often sensationalistic spadework does great justice in representing the plight of these “misfits of activism” and their vigilante mischief.

An intensive, potent profile of contemporary digital activism at its most unsettling—and most effective.

ON THE ROAD WITH JANIS JOPLIN Cooke, John Byrne Berkley (336 pp.) $27.95 | Nov. 1, 2014 978-0-425-27411-8

A memoir of the author’s time working for the spellbinding Janis Joplin.

Most of the action in former road manager Cooke’s narrative takes place in venues like Monterey, the Chelsea Hotel and the Haight, but it’s when Joplin is at home in the Lone Star State, among straights and squares and beehive-haired classmates, that Cooke’s account takes off: “Most of her classmates look older than her,” he writes of an ill-fated reunion. “It’s as if the last time they had fun was in high school and they don’t expect to have fun ever again.” Though fretful, fearful and worn down by her well-known dependencies on the needle and the bottle, Joplin was all about making fun for herself and those around her, and though there’s a certain inevitability throughout these pages that things aren’t going to end well, Joplin emerges as someone we all might like to have known. That said, there’s also a gulf between Cooke and his subject; part has to do with her reserve and her unwillingness to get involved with an employee (airplane make-out sessions notwithstanding), but part has to do with Cooke’s failure to be in the right place at the right time. He chose not to stay at the Chelsea (“a decision I will later regret”), set up house on North Beach rather than in the Haight and otherwise exercised counter-countercultural tendencies (“I’m a beatnik, not a hippie”) that led Big Brother and company to hold him at arm’s length. Still, if his portrait of Joplin herself doesn’t shed much new light, Cooke is good on the politics of the music business and the decisions that might not have been in her best interests. |

“A superb addition to an overstuffed genre.” from waterloo

WATERLOO A New History

Significant for ardent devotees of Joplin; less than essential for others.

HER BRILLIANT CAREER Ten Extraordinary Women of the Fifties Cooke, Rachel Harper/HarperCollins (368 pp.) $26.99 | Dec. 2, 2014 978-0-06-233386-5

British journalist Cooke recounts the stories of 10 women whose personal and professional lives shattered the common image of a repressed 1950s homemaker.

Though the seven chapters (one chapter weaves together the life stories of three women) can be enjoyed as stand-alone biographies, when read as a whole, the narrative creates a fascinating portrait of cultural life in post–World War II Britain. The war upended social roles in Britain. During wartime, women filled jobs men vacated, but at the war’s conclusion, the veterans wanted their positions back. How should the women who wanted to work outside the home during the 1950s pursue that goal? Cooke noted how, for women on a career path, the route forward was a fraught one. “Those who embarked on careers,” she writes, “had to be thick-skinned: immune to slights and knock-backs, resolute in the face of tremendous social expectation and prepared for loneliness.” The author’s subjects include a best-selling cookbook author, a magazine editor, a rally car driver, a writer and popular celebrity, an architect, a gardener, a director, a producer, an archaeologist and a judge. The author uses elements of published memoirs, diaries or letters, and she also interviewed numerous friends, relatives and colleagues of each of her subjects. Cooke includes two delightful bonus sections, adding another layer to her snapshot of the era. One discusses fashion in the ’50s, and the other lists “Some Good and Richly Subversive Novels by Women, 1950-60.” For American readers, many of these women will be unfamiliar, and some of the cultural reference points may not click. Regardless, each of the portraits illuminatingly details the struggles and triumphs of these women, who laid the groundwork for working women in the 1960s and beyond.

Cooke’s history of these uncelebrated heroines admirably fills in the gaps in the continuing story of women’s role in the workplace.

Corrigan, Gordon Pegasus (368 pp.) $28.95 | Dec. 5, 2014 978-1-60598-652-4

Two centuries have not diminished the avalanche of books on this subject, but even history buffs familiar with the two generals and their epic 1815 encounter will not regret choosing this one.

Exhausted after 20 years of war, France did not mourn Napoleon’s exile to Elba in 1814. When he returned, nine months later, the restored Bourbon monarchy had exhausted its goodwill, and he had little trouble resuming office. Veteran military historian Corrigan (A Great and Glorious Adventure: A History of the Hundred Years War and the Birth of Renaissance England, 2014, etc.) suggests that he should have waited a few more years to return.

Immense allied forces that had defeated him were still in place, with their leaders conveniently conferring in Vienna. Outnumbered, Napoleon knew that his only chance was to defeat each army separately, so he raced toward Belgium and the Duke of Wellington’s Anglo-Dutch forces. The Prussian army was nearby; Austrian and Russian armies were elsewhere. Corrigan delivers a gripping, nuts-and-bolts account of a clash whose first step does not occur until nearly 150 pages in. Until then, readers will encounter equally gripping biographies of three generals (Blucher, the Prussian commander, gets deserved equal billing) and a nation-by-nation review of early-19th-century European military recruitment, weapons, training, tactics and leadership.

Corrigan dismisses the History Channel view of Waterloo as a stunning British victory against great odds. In reality, “it was an allied victory against odds that weren’t all that bad.” British forces were a minority in Wellington’s Anglo-Dutch army, which was smaller than the Prussian army that came to its aid.

It was not won through tactical ingenuity but the “perceived British virtue of sticking it out until help arrived.”

A superb addition to an overstuffed genre.

NAVY SEALS Their Untold Story

Couch, Dick; Doyle, William Morrow/HarperCollins (320 pp.) $29.99 | Nov. 11, 2014 978-0-06-233660-6

Developmental narrative of the esteemed Navy SEALs, co-written by a former member.

Couch (Always Faithful, Always Forward: The Forging of a Special Operations Marine, 2014, etc.) and Doyle (A Soldier’s Dream: Captain Travis Patriquin and the Awakening of Iraq, 2011, etc.) co-authored this book as a companion to a PBS documentary: “It is our effort to tell the story of a remarkable elite fighting force |

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and its ancestors.” The SEALs’ legendary improvisational toughness, write the authors, started with the underwater demolition teams in World War II. The UDTs were hasty responses to the horrific Tarawa landings and played a significant role in both theaters, clearing Axis beach obstacles under fire. The SEALs were formally established in 1962, after President John F. Kennedy “encouraged the Pentagon to beef up counterinsurgency and Special Operations forces.”

Couch narrates his own tour-of-duty experience during Vietnam rescuing POWs from a prison camp, terming such missions “a tribute to the professional culture that was emerging in the SEAL Teams in the late 1960s and early 1970s.” Yet the SEALs’ fighting autonomy caused controversy; as one recalled, “part of the Navy saw us as some sort of quasi-criminal element.” The counterterrorism-oriented SEAL Team 6 formed in 1980 and fought in the Grenada invasion, the chaos of which led to the consolidation of the U.S. Special Forces Command. After this, “they morphed into professional, well-drilled, experienced, responsible operators” who were ready for the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. Couch and Doyle precisely depict many missions, including the famed rescue of Capt. Richard Phillips and the killing of Osama bin Laden.

They focus on SEAL history and tactics and their embrace of obscure technologies and weaponry while emphasizing that in the Special Forces, “Navy SEAL training is the longest and, arguably, the most difficult.”

Entertaining, no-nonsense balancing of legends and martial reality. (First printing of 100,000)

SHOCK FACTOR American Snipers in the War on Terror Coughlin, Jack with Bruning, John R. St. Martin’s (320 pp.) $26.99 | Oct. 28, 2014 978-1-250-01655-3

Grim account of combat tours in Iraq, where Marine and National Guard snipers made a crucial difference.

Retired USMC Gunnery Sgt. Coughlin (co-author: Time to Kill, 2013, etc.), who co-authored this book with prolific military writer Bruning (co-author: Level Zero Heroes, 2014, etc.), writes of his fellow snipers, “[b]eing called a murderer comes with the territory....we have been the most misunderstood and marginalized community in the American military.” Whether despite or because of this fearsome reputation, the author argues that snipers are the key to force protection and battlefield superiority in America’s recent conflicts: “[P]recision marksmanship can destroy a numerically superior foe’s will to fight.” The narrative focuses on several brutal Iraq War campaigns, including the initial race to Baghdad (in which Coughlin participated) and the 2005 siege of the city of Ramadi. The telling is fast-paced and violent, the tone often bitter: The authors seemingly view most Iraqis as ungrateful, cowardly collaborators (or in one 80

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disturbing encounter, vicious torturers) yet portray the Iraq campaign itself as a vital aspect of the global war on terror.

They also castigate the military bureaucracy for its restrictive rules of engagement but revere the snipers themselves, capturing their camaraderie and self-reliance. Even in the sectarian bloodbath of Iraq, “they had the opportunity to do what we snipers do best. They located, closed with, and destroyed the enemy with long-range precision fire that minimized civilian casualties.” Beyond the realistic depictions of urban combat, the book’s strength is its in-depth discussion of the elite snipers’ weapons, training and tactics. The authors demystify this arcane military specialty, as when explaining why the snipers worked with spotters in combat: “There are so many factors that need to be kept track of for a long-range shot, you really need two brains working together to be most effective.”

Will appeal to veteran and aspiring warriors, as well as conservative readers.

THE UNSPEAKABLE And Other Subjects of Discussion

Daum, Meghan Farrar, Straus and Giroux (256 pp.) $26.00 | Nov. 18, 2014 978-0-374-28044-4

A Los Angeles Times columnist unflinchingly probes some of her life’s themes— “death, dogs, romance, children, lack of children [and] Joni Mitchell”—to find respite from “sentimentality and its discontents.”

In this collection of 10 essays, Daum (Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived in that House, 2010, etc.) takes a look at her past, not with the goal of exposing past sins, but of exploring “the tension between primal reactions and public decorum.” She opens the book and sets the tone with “Matricide,” a piece about the death of the mother she both loved and hated. Daum neither eulogizes her mother nor seeks false solace in positive memories. Rather, she focuses on the way she packed up her mother’s apartment just before she died, thinking “how great it would be if she were hit by, say, the M7 express on Columbus Avenue and killed instantly and painlessly.” Daum leavens the discomfort her frankness sometimes provokes with quirkiness and humor. In “The Best Possible Experience,” she writes about how, in her youthful quest “to live with authenticity” and “respect the randomness of life,” she once dated a man who sought his truths in astrology and believed that he was the reincarnation of Jesus Christ. In early middle age and before her happy but childless-by-choice marriage, Daum became what, in another essay, she calls an “honorary dyke”— a short-haired woman who owned a dog that was “effectively [her] boyfriend,” drove a Subaru station wagon and was often taken for a lesbian. In another piece, she considers her obsession with Joni Mitchell, a singer whom many perceive as the “mouthpiece for romance-crazed girls everywhere” but whom Daum sees as “the ultimate antiromantic” and a kind |

“Well-handled by Davis: both heart gladdening and a challenge to start making sense of national immigration policy.” from spare parts

THE WORLD OF RAYMOND CHANDLER In His Own Words

of emotional kindred spirit. Sharp, witty and illuminating, Daum’s essays offer refreshing insight into the complexities of living an examined life in a world hostile to the multifaceted face of truth.

An honest and humorously edgy collection.

SPARE PARTS Four Undocumented Teenagers, One Ugly Robot, and the Battle for the American Dream Davis, Joshua Farrar, Straus and Giroux (240 pp.) $25.00 | $14.00 paper | Dec. 2, 2014 978-0-374-18337-0 978-0-374-53498-1 paper

The story of four high schoolers from the wrong side of Phoenix who built a robot, entered it in a national competition that included such prestigious schools as MIT, and won.

Wired contributing editor and Epic magazine co-founder Davis explores the lives of four teenagers who could have easily fallen through the cracks but instead managed to channel their creative energy into a preposterous victory in a much-regarded robotic competition. The author lets the narrative grow organically: Nothing came easily; brainstorms didn’t save the day, but ingenuity did; there was anger, poverty and neglect, as well as the quandary of U.S. immigration policy, which, when this drama was taking place, 2004, was actively spawning xenophobic vigilante groups. “[S]tudents who were living in the country illegally could be sought out and detained....Even a seemingly harmless summer science competition bore life-altering risks,” writes Davis. There were also intergroup struggles that had to be overcome, as the author rightly points out that since these boys didn’t have deep pockets, they had to fall back on cooperation and ingenuity and the help, guidance and advice of two mentors. There were also a few angels in the picture, scientists who lent their valuable equipment and wisdom to the project; they didn’t give the boys the answers, but they helped point them in the right direction. Always hovering in the background of the story, and often intruding to the front of the action, is the Border Patrol, as well as “the tractor-beam pull of poverty and low expectations.” This is the everyday life of the illegal immigrant, but these immigrants are trying to win the Marine Advanced Technology Education Robotics Competition. What motivated those involved and what impressed the judges was “that there was no reason to come up with a complex solution when an elementary one would suffice.”

Well-handled by Davis: both heart gladdening and a challenge to start making sense of national immigration policy.

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Day, Barry—Ed. Knopf (288 pp.) $27.95 | Nov. 14, 2014 978-0-385-35236-9

Day (The Letters of Noel Coward, 2007, etc.) lets peerless mystery writer Raymond Chandler reveal himself through his own words—and in those of his fictional creation Philip Marlowe—while contributing structure, comment and a useful amount of connective tissue.

For someone so associated with the American patois, it is ironic that Chandler generally thought of himself as a classically educated “Englishman” imbued with British tastes. Day demonstrates how the Chicago-born author, a resident of England for much of his youth, had to “learn American just like a foreign language,” both customs and vernacular. Chandler was taken with the pungency of American English, admiring how it “roughed up” and enlivened the language, as Shakespeare had done. Day then shows how character, language and style superseded plot in Chandler’s fiction, unlike such shallow avatars of construction as Agatha Christie. Though a man of comparatively modest literary output, Chandler mused extensively on writing in letters to colleagues and friends. Day connects Chandler’s signature ideas and impulses most effectively in this correspondence.

While he disclaims biographical intent, such elements abound in the book. Chandler was repatriated to Los Angeles in 1912, and the city would become as much a character in his novels as Marlowe, his alter ego. Foremost, Chandler was a sultan of similes. Delightful as they often are, however, Day drowns us in a deluge of them. Like Chandler, Day also betrays a faint whiff of condescension toward American culture—not without some justification—but he is wholly sympathetic in charting Chandler’s long, happy marriage to a woman 18 years his senior, his devastation over her death and his accelerated alcoholism.

Chandler wrote not about crime or detection, as George V. Higgins observed, but about the corruption of the human spirit. Day deepens our understanding of how Chandler, who cared for his legacy, balanced commitment to principle with living and prospering in the real world.

(115 photos)

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FALLEN LEAVES Last Words on Life, Love, War and God

Durant, Will Simon & Schuster (208 pp.) $25.00 | Dec. 9, 2014 978-1-4767-7154-0

Final messages of wisdom from a well-known scholar.

Throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s, there were hints that Durant, author of the 11-volume The Story of Civilization, was writing a compilation of personal thoughts on a variety of topics. Yet no one had seen the manuscript, and after Durant’s death in 1981, the topic was dropped. It was only by chance that the manuscript was found, when his granddaughter moved and discovered the piece in a box. In the preface, which was written at the age of 95, Durant writes, “Please do not expect any new system of philosophy, nor any world-shaking cogitations; these will be human confessions, not divine revelations; they are micro- or mini-essays whose only dignity lies in their subjects rather than in their profundity or their size.” Those are modest words for a man who explores the profundity of being human, whether that means examining an infant’s first moments of life, why religion has such a strong influence in so many people’s lives or why racism is still prevalent in the United States. Durant also meditates on world governments and why we grow more conservative as we age, offers his opinions on sex and morality, and sings “a hymn in praise of women.” While some of the thoughts are dated due to the time in which they were written, or might seem a bit extreme—e.g., the idea to “make parentage a privilege and not a right. No one has the right to bring a child into the community without having passed tests of physical and mental fitness to breed”—his philosophical views are eye-opening and offer readers a chance to re-examine their own feelings regarding the human race and what it has and has not managed to accomplish in its short stint on Earth.

Short but persuasive commentaries on a diversity of topics from a respected scholar of humanity.

THEY EAT HORSES, DON’T THEY? The Truth About the French Eatwell, Piu Marie Dunne/St. Martin’s (352 pp.) $26.99 | Dec. 9, 2014 978-1-250-05305-3

In this debut, Eatwell pulls back the veil on France and French culture, exposing the truth behind 45 myths that have swirled around the French for ages.

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historical facts with present-day evaluations, providing readers with in-depth analyses on a wide array of topics, including the eating of horse meat in France, the numerous types of cheese available and the subcultures that surround them, and the drinking habits of the old and young. She examines French toilets and plumbing, which body parts French women shave, if any, and the use of the bidet, which turned into a common feature in whorehouses; it was “the indispensable tool of the trade for the world’s oldest profession, a receptacle for ablutions, a cleansing contraceptive, purger of venereal disease, and in some cases an aid to home abortion.” Lovers of Paris will enjoy Eatwell’s chronicles of her journeys through the streets of the Left Bank in search of artists and writers, her descents into the Paris Metro and cataloging of its various smells. She also discusses the massive amount of canine excrement found on Paris streets.

In addition, she follows the French on holiday as they flee the cities and migrate to the coast and tells all on French women going topless on the beaches. The French have influenced cultures around the world, but particularly that of the British, and Eatwell also studies the effects French food and culture have had on their neighbors across the Channel. At the end of each piece, the author provides a “myth evaluation” on the myth’s overall veracity.

Entertaining mini-essays that debunk common idealized conceptions of the French. (50 b/w illustrations)

AMERICAN TITAN Searching for John Wayne

Eliot, Marc Dey Street/HarperCollins (416 pp.) $28.99 | Nov. 4, 2014 978-0-06-226900-3 978-0-06-226903-4 e-book 978-0-06-234433-5 Lg. Prt.

A veteran biographer of pop-culture icons (Cary Grant, Walt Disney, Clint Eastwood) returns with an account of the astonishing film career of Marion Robert Morrison (1907-1979).

Eliot (Nicholson: A Biography, 2013, etc.) dispenses with much one might expect in a thick biography—e.g., interviews with those who knew Wayne, sordid sexual details (the author does show us an actor who enjoyed relations with myriads of women) or pompous declarations about what Wayne symbolized. Instead, he focuses on the career of the Duke (the name of a boyhood dog), carefully charting his rise from a modest Iowa family—his father, who frequently failed and eventually left, was sometimes a druggist—to his enduring status as one of Hollywood’s most popular actors, despite his intransigent right-wing political views in a left-wing community. Nothing happened quickly. Wayne worked behind the scenes and took modest walk-on parts before gradually finding his place as an actor. It was John Ford’s Stagecoach (1939) that ignited his career, though even then he did not leap to stardom. More minor (and bad and horrible) films followed, and Eliot, to his credit, pulls no punches in his assessments of Wayne’s performances. However, |

“Readers keeping an eye on the contemporary Middle East will learn much from Fathi’s travels and observations.” from the lonely war

the author also agrees with Wayne’s conviction that the liberal Hollywood establishment denied him Oscar nominations even for his finest roles—in The Searchers, for example, a 1956 film (and Wayne performance) that Eliot continually praises. Eliot is careful to quote reviews of key performances, to let us know the box office successes (and failures) and to give us a peek at Wayne’s behavior on the set. We also see his relationships with key directors John Ford and Howard Hawks, and there are plenty of touching moments—e.g., Wayne’s final appearance at the Oscars shortly before he died of stomach cancer.

A close, unblinking look at a bright star with some internal darkness.

ANIMAL WEAPONS The Evolution of Battle Emlen, Douglas J. Illus. by Tuss, David J. Henry Holt (304 pp.) $32.50 | Nov. 11, 2014 978-0-8050-9450-3

Emlen (Biology/Univ. of Montana) presents a bestiary equipped with outsize weaponry.

“What strikes us about antlers is that they are big,” writes the author in this absorbing exploration of the exaggerated fighting instruments sported by animals and the uncanny ways in which they seem to march in lockstep with human weapons—up to a point. For the animals, it really comes down to sex; for the humans, it comes down to money. But Emlen is not a hurried or simplistic storyteller. He is a writer of nuance, and he traveled to many different environments to get the story. He prefers to meet the creatures on their own ground, to take in the habitat and consider the big picture. He introduces us to a pleasing variety of creatures, including sticklebacks, saber-toothed tigers, ibex rams, bamboo bugs and dung beetles, cuttlefish, alligator gar and porcupines, and he combs over their evolutionary advantages and disadvantages. It might seem obvious that an elk with a massive rack would be the king of the harem, but Emlen reminds us that the bull grows those monstrosities every year, and from his own bone. Just when his rack is ready for the rut, his skeleton is ready for rehab: “[A]nimal weapons under strong sexual selection, for example, may attain astonishing proportions before costs catch up and place the project in check.” There are moose flies and harlequin beetles and fiddler crabs, which work mostly through threats, as well as the biochemical weapons deployed by skunks, polecats and stink bugs. Throughout the book, Emlen’s demonstrations of the many parallels between human and animal weapons are fascinating, even when the possibilities are frightening. “I stand awed and shaken,” he writes, “thrilled by the parallels and, at the same time, terrified by the prospects.”

Solid natural history, along with a well-turned thought or two about when weapons spell their owner’s doom.

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THE LONELY WAR One Woman’s Account of the Struggle for Modern Iran

Fathi, Nazila Basic (336 pp.) $27.99 | Dec. 9, 2014 978-0-465-06999-6

Cautious but subtly optimistic account of Iran’s unfinished revolution by New York Times correspondent Fathi.

The author was still a child when, in 1979, an insurrection led by an uneasy alliance of leftists and Muslim fundamentalists forced the shah of Iran from his throne. As she notes, more than two-thirds of her compatriots were not even born when these transformative events occurred, and though the ayatollahs imposed an austere rule over the country, Iran’s young men and women have been “exposed to new ideas and opinions through technologies such as satellite television and the Internet.” In other words, Iran is not monolithic in its religious conservatism, nor in any other way; neither is it backward, though the suspicion that it is haunts Iranians: Backwardness, writes the author, “had embarrassing connotations of ignorance, poverty, and underdevelopment.” Crunching the numbers, it wouldn’t seem that the Iranians have much to worry about, for Fathi reckons that two-thirds of the country is also solidly middle-class, which would rival the statistics for the United States. The concept of backwardness, though, is a strong one, dating back many generations, and it has explanatory power for why Iran should so often make the news trying to assert itself in regional and even world events. Fathi’s combination of reportage and memoir is often effective, as when she writes of religion through the lens of an experience with a teacher who assured her that her prayers were “nullified” because her hood wasn’t arranged just so: “Her Islam was more about outward signs...to a point that was annoying.” Though, as the author notes, Iran has more than its share of dour by-thebook religionists, it is also refreshingly diverse and heterodox—if also in need of much change.

Readers keeping an eye on the contemporary Middle East will learn much from Fathi’s travels and observations.

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INTERVIEWS & PROFILES

Katha Pollitt

The longtime Nation columnist dismantles years of rhetoric about abortion in her new book

By Alex Heimbach

Photo courtesy Christina Pabst

Reading Katha Pollitt’s new book, Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights, in public feels slightly risky. Abortion is arguably the single most controversial social issue in the United States—and as the names of its two sides, pro-choice and pro-life, suggest, it has some of the highest stakes. Do you value a woman’s right to choose or a child’s right to life?

“There’s a very deep drive to make [abortion] a moral issue,” Pollitt says, but it’s actually “a normal part of reproductive life.” In the wake of recent conservative attempts to tighten abortion restrictions, Pollitt realized that though there were many books reporting on the maneuvers of the anti-abortion movement, there wasn’t one that really made a positive case for a woman’s right to an abortion. So she set out to show why abortion should not only be a legal choice, but also a socially embraced one.

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This meant dismantling years of accumulated rhetoric supporting the idea that abortion is, at best, a necessary evil. For starters, she refuses to refer to abortion opponents as pro-life. This term, she writes, encodes the idea that “a fertilized egg is a life in the same sense a woman is” and that opposing abortion is thus about saving lives rather than about restricting women’s choices. In fact, she says, “it’s really all about sex”—namely, women’s ability to have sex without consequences, which was long a privilege reserved for men.

Pollitt contends that most of the anti-abortion position makes little sense upon close examination.

Take, for example, the fact that even many of those who want to outlaw abortion believe there should be allowances for rape victims. “But why?” Pollitt asks.

“From a fetal point of view it makes no difference.” If abortion is really murder, then shouldn’t it be an even bigger issue? After all, that would mean that one in every three women is a murderer.

Yet even pro-choicers are often squeamish about abortion. “There’s this position of, we want abortion to be legal but we want everybody to feel really bad about it,” she says, referencing liberal writers like Naomi Wolf and Andrew Sullivan, who has described abortion as “always and everywhere a moral tragedy.” Pollitt utterly rejects this kind of thinking (including the old Clinton ideal of “legal, safe, and rare”) and insists that though abortion may be a major trauma for some women, for many it is simply a medical procedure.

In place of a rush to judgment (or sympathy), Pollitt wants us to consider the idea that abortion may be a wise, even moral decision for many women. “We need to see abortion as part of the normal life of women and families in America, instead of seeing it as |

this weird extraordinary, terrible thing that happens to women who are insufficiently careful,” she says.

“Abortion is part of life. And it’s part of motherhood.”

That means rejecting the oft-drawn contrast between the responsible mother who raises her child and the careless floozy who aborts it for a more nuanced—and fact-based—view of who is having abortions and why. Most women who have abortions are poor mothers: 7 in 10 are low-income, and 6 in 10 already have at least one child. Many more will go on to become mothers later in their lives.

In fact, part of what inspired Pollitt to write Pro was the discovery, buried within an old FBI file, that her own mother had an illegal abortion in 1960 that she had never spoken about to her daughter or her husband. Roe v. Wade may have rendered such secrecy legally unnecessary, but it remains the norm. To admit to having an abortion is a political act—one that many women aren’t comfortable with.

“I never understand women who say, ‘I’m not a feminist; I just think of myself as a person,’ ” she says.

“I think of myself as a person too, but you occupy a social position, you occupy a political position, and you live in a country that treats women this way and not that way. How women can not be interested in that I just don’t understand.”

This pervasive belief that our rights won’t be affected, even as we see others’ being taken away, is partly why Pollitt believes the anti-choice movement has made such strides recently. Most people, she says, don’t realize that abortion rights are primarily dictated by state law, and since most abortion supporters live in states with liberal abortion laws, they assume there’s nothing to worry about. It doesn’t help that the pro-choice movement lacks the kind of institutional support that churches provide to the antiabortion movement.

In researching her book, Pollitt was surprised to find that for much of American history, her views wouldn’t have been all that radical. In most parts of Colonial America, abortion was allowed until well into the second trimester. Had you opened up a newspaper during the 19th century, you would have found numerous ads for products like “Uterine Regulators” and the “Samaritan’s Gift for Females”—abortifacient herbal preparations. Pollitt even suggests that the massive drop in birth rate between 1800 and 1930, from roughly seven children per woman to merely two, was thanks primarily to abortions, given |

that other birth control methods were still mostly ineffective or inaccessible.

We may be a long way from such blasé acceptance, but Pollitt does believe the tide is turning in favor of abortion rights. Women, she says, are realizing how abortion is connected to other issues of women’s rights, like equal pay, maternity leave and access to birth control. Extreme measures like personhood amendments have largely failed to pass and have, in some places, resulted in a general swing to the left.

The idea that women have abortions for many reasons, all of them valid, is also increasingly widespread.

“Abortion is part of the fabric of American life,” she says, “and it probably always will be.”

Alex Heimbach is a freelance writer.

Pro was reviewed in the Aug. 15, 2014, issue of Kirkus Reviews.

Pro Reclaiming Abortion Rights Pollitt, Katha Picador (256 pp.) $25.00 | Oct. 14, 2014 978-0-312-62054-7 kirkus.com

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THE QB The Making of Modern Quarterbacks

IS THAT ALL THERE IS? The Strange Life of Peggy Lee

Gavin, James Atria (608 pp.) $32.00 | Nov. 11, 2014 978-1-4516-4168-4

Feldman, Bruce Crown Archetype (336 pp.) $27.00 | Nov. 4, 2014 978-0-553-41845-3

A yearlong, behind-the-scenes look at the booming—and lucrative—business of coaching upcoming quarterbacks.

Across all sports, coaching is a $5.9 billion industry. Fox Sports’ senior football commentator Feldman (Meat Market: Inside the Smash-Mouth World of College Football Recruiting, 2008, etc.) examines the elite #TDFB high school football quarterback training camp (and related programs) created by ex-NFL quarterback Trent Dilfer—what Dilfer calls a “holistic coaching ecosystem that unites coaches and expands their influence”—for athletes and independent coaches. The author chronicles the progress and development (and emotional immaturity) of frenetic, loose cannon QB (Feldman calls them QBs throughout the book) Johnny Manziel from his time at Texas A&M University, his performance at the high-stakes NFL Combine and first-round selection in the NFL draft. Feldman also examines the career of veteran QB coach George Whitfield Jr., the “QB Whisperer,” who has trained several star NFL quarterbacks. Credit Feldman for inserting himself in camp and sharing a variety of inside observations— e.g., the most desirable characteristic scouts look for in a high school recruit isn’t hand size, arm strength or even accuracy, but an intangible “magic,” what Dilfer calls “Dude Qualities.” It’s the ability to thrive in high-pressure situations, how you “own the environment.” In a chapter Feldman amusingly and fittingly titles “The Pageant World For Boys,” he reports on how parents will pay $700 per hour for one-on-one coaching and that a year of tutoring at a QB camp can cost $60,000. Indeed, access to exclusive coaching appeals to “QB dads,” whom he describes as Type-A, myopic and even nutty. Feldman reveals Dilfer’s vision for his football enterprises as well as his frequent, pompous declarations, such as describing coach Whitfield as “a rock star in the QB space.”

Enlightening for those interested in performance psychology, kinetic motion analysis and the “competitive temperament” of alpha males.

The sad, troubled life of the popular jazz singer.

Peggy Lee (1920-2002), born Norma Deloris Egstrom, grew up in North Dakota, raised by an alcoholic father and mean stepmother. Yearning to be the center of attention, she wanted to be a movie star. By the time she was 15, she realized that her natural singing talent might get her out of the prairie. “She would have done anything to become famous,” a friend told music journalist Gavin (Deep in Dreams: The Long Night of Chet Baker, 2002, etc.). The author’s research is impressive: He has interviewed scores of people who knew Lee, worked with or for her, or witnessed her performances; he cites and assesses songs she recorded, performed and wrote; he follows her love affairs, however brief, and her four brief marriages.

What he learns, however, proves repetitious: She was a vulnerable woman so frightened of performing that she downed a considerable amount of cognac before sweeping on stage; soon, alcohol was supplemented with Valium and Quaaludes. She was a demanding, selfish employer. She was deeply lonely. Her musicians, Gavin was told, “were her family....She kept them from leaving her after each show, which caused some problems with those who had wives or a life and didn’t want to hang out until the early morning hours.” On stage, she won praise for her “economy of movement.” She explained her stillness: “I just stood there because I was too scared to move.” She admired Billie Holiday, but the feeling was not mutual. She was a hypochondriac and a devotee of the Church of Religious Science, and she tried all manner of fad diets in an attempt to control her burgeoning weight. Her career had its ups and downs: Some of her songs—“Fever,” for example—made her famous, but some flopped.

An overly detailed biography that Lee’s die-hard fans will welcome.

ONLY ONE THING CAN SAVE US Why America Needs a New Kind of Labor Movement

Geoghegan, Thomas New Press (272 pp.) $25.95 | Dec. 19, 2014 978-1-59558-836-4

A union lawyer offers radical prescriptions to resuscitate a moribund labor movement.

In a book that suggests that a revival of labor is necessary to the survival of democracy, Geoghegan (Were You Born on the Wrong Continent?: How the European Model Can Help You Get a Life, 2010, etc.) admits from the outset that prospects look grim in a country that seems to regard Big Labor as an anachronism. But 86

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“Green holistically explores aspects of the war’s effects with exceptionally thorough research on subjects as diverse as the Catholic Church, women, peasants and even language.” from the hundred years war

with the “drop-by-drop disappearance of the middle class,” with wages slashed and job security replaced by contract work, desperate times require desperate measures: “Some say that our current income inequality is no longer like the Roaring Twenties or even the Gilded Age: we’re reaching inequality that we haven’t known since feudalism. Charlemagne, not J.P. Morgan, is the relevant comparison.” The author suggests moving the battle lines from union-corporation (where the latter has won) to the political arena, where the Democratic Party has failed to represent the interests of its longtime constituents, and to the government, where the Civil Rights Act should be extended to encompass union busting. He finds hope in service professions such as nursing and teaching, where battles are fought over conditions that can benefit the community at large (greater resources, smaller class size) beyond narrower concerns such as salary and security, and where public opinion is the ultimate arbiter. Some of Geoghegan’s suggestions might seem counterintuitive: that globalization can save American labor rather than simply deport jobs, that unions would be better off representing those who join enthusiastically rather than representing all, and that the Democratic Party’s emphasis on education is misplaced (resulting in greater student debt rather than necessarily higher salaries).

However, he insists that since the stakes are so high, a new labor resurgence cannot succeed with the old game plan.

A manifesto that provokes even when it doesn’t convince and tempers its broadsides with humor and a conversational style.

THE FORGOTTEN DEPRESSION 1921: The Crash that Cured Itself

Grant, James Simon & Schuster (256 pp.) $28.00 | Nov. 11, 2014 978-1-4516-8645-6

Financial journalist Grant (Mr. Speaker!

The Life and Times of Thomas B. Reed, the Man Who Broke the Filibuster, 2011) examines an economic trough that ended without government intervention.

In November 1919, the Dow Jones Industrial Average stood at 119.62. In August 1921, it was 63.9, a decline of nearly half. Eighteen months after it began, writes the author, the depression of 1920-1921 was “over and done with.” It is a matter of libertarian faith that the Great Depression was prolonged rather than alleviated by Keynesian economic policy, and Grant’s intent is clear: The invisible hand reigns supreme, the market knows what’s good, and government meddling usually ends badly. All those points are arguable, but ideology aside, Grant’s look at this forgotten episode, which gave us the grimly jaunty tune “Ain’t We Got Fun,” has much to commend it even as it raises questions.

As he observes, the governments of Woodrow Wilson and then Warren G. Harding did not “socialize the risk of financial failure or attempt to steer and guide the national economy by manipulating either the rate of federal spending or the value of the dollar.” |

But could this model have been followed in the more complex financial meltdown of 2008? Grant earns points for finding something at all good to say about the notoriously corrupt Harding administration, and while his narrative sometimes labors under the weight of facts, figures and financial terminology, his account of how industry reckoned with the downturn—in part by lowering wages, in part just by waiting it out—makes for interesting reading indeed, at least for numbers wonks.

A solid effort at portraying the muted spell that opened the Roaring ’20s and at arguing for more trust in the selfhealing properties of the business cycle.

THE HUNDRED YEARS WAR A People’s History

Green, David Yale Univ. (344 pp.) $40.00 | Nov. 25, 2014 978-0-300-13451-3

In this new, refreshing look at the Hundred Years’ War, Green (Edward the Black Prince: Power in Medieval Europe, 2007) examines the resulting reconstruction of European culture.

“The crucible of war forged and reforged the English and French nations into something new,” writes the author in this illuminating history. This war, or series thereof, lasted from 1337 to 1453, with interruptions for short terms of peace, famine, civil strife in France and the Black Death. During that time, there would be changes everywhere, but the war began as a feudal and dynastic struggle, as Edward III of England laid claim to the French crown.

It ended with a new sense of national identity in both countries as they sought to maintain or reclaim territory, particularly the former Angevin possessions that covered most of modern-day France.

The English dominated the first half of the conflict with major victories at Crecy, Poitiers and Agincourt. During the reign of Henry V in particular, the goal was to eliminate any and all support for the French king. This the English accomplished by a grande chevauchee, a calculated destruction that progressed from Bordeaux to Narbonne, depriving the French king of not only manpower, but supplies and tax income. The Hundred Years’ War also significantly affected the scale of knightly ransoms, which changed ancient codes of chivalry, class divisions and feudal service. Suddenly, artillery and the longbow were more important that the cavalry, and since the archers and infantry were predominately peasants, the days of feudalism were on the wane. The war both emphasized and created differences between the two countries, which shared hundreds of years of common history.

Green holistically explores aspects of the war’s effects with exceptionally thorough research on subjects as diverse as the Catholic Church, women, peasants and even language.

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A ROYAL EXPERIMENT The Private Life of King George III Hadlow, Janice Henry Holt (704 pp.) $40.00 | Nov. 18, 2014 978-0-8050-9656-9

Longtime BBC staffer Hadlow debuts with a new take on England’s King George III. “As George saw it,” writes the author “[a] legacy of amoral, cynical behavior had warped and corrupted the Hanoverians, crippling their effectiveness as rulers and making their private lives miserable.” When he came to the throne in 1760, he vowed to be a better parent than his great-grandfather George I, who had his own son arrested, and a better husband than his flagrantly philandering grandfather George II. In so doing, George III aimed to make the royal family a moral example to the nation. This notion—that the king’s duty was “to act as the conscience of the country,” avoiding day-to-day politicking—is in some ways an early definition of the modern constitutional monarchy, and Hadlow might profitably have pursued it more fully. Her real interest, though, is a detailed account of George’s generally happy marriage to Charlotte, princess of the German duchy Mecklenburg-Strelitz, and the not-so-happy consequences for their 13 children.

Little of it seems to have much to do with her thesis. George III had just as poisonous a relationship with his eldest son, who openly supported the political opposition and brandished a lifestyle contrary to his father’s principles, as George’s own father, Frederick, had with George II—for the same reasons. The sad stories of the royal princesses, who either died as spinsters or married late with severely reduced expectations, certainly were linked to George’s insistence that proper family life was firmly secluded from the temptations of court (indeed, from almost any entertainment whatsoever), but none of this adds up to a coherent picture of George’s reign or legacy. Extended forays into the king’s periods of madness, which began in 1788 and finally incapacitated him for good in 1811, also diffuse the narrative focus.

Unconvincing as revisionist history but enjoyable for its vivid depiction of several varieties of royal lifestyles— and plenty of royal gossip.

THE ANNOTATED MIXTAPE

Harmon, Joshua Dzanc (256 pp.) $14.95 paper | Nov. 11, 2014 978-1-936873-24-1

An obsessive record collector’s personal essays categorized by song.

Harmon’s (Scape, 2009, etc.) opening essay is a paean to the life of a collector, a life he recognizes for its obsessive tendencies that align him with other collectors equally impulsive and pathological about their habit (he owns more than 4,000 vinyl records). Like any serious collector, the author occasionally gives the impression of pretension or snobbery— he openly admits this tendency—but his taste is varied and eclectic enough to spare the label from sticking. The opening serves as an introduction of sorts, but it does little to set up the following essays, as readers are thrust into Harmon’s peculiar format and style without any substantial statement about his project. Each essay is dedicated to a song or two that serves as a metaphor or theme for Harmon’s musings. For instance, the author uses Section 25’s “Trident” as a platform to discuss Reagan-era nuclear proliferation and the Soviet Union. There is never any definitive connection, however, between the band’s choice of “Trident” as a song name in 1982 and the creation of the Trident II missile in 1981, other than coincidence. This type of associative connection is common in Harmon’s essays, which have more to do with feeling and memory than argument. Harmon is often sentimental as he rhapsodizes about his home state of Massachusetts in several chapters, naturally referencing the Modern Lovers’ “Roadrunner,” his childhood love of early U2 and his distaste for Bauhaus. He even waxes on the uniquely ephemeral quality of music that makes it more prone to wistfulness than other art forms. Ultimately, the personal nature of these essays often makes them feel more like journal entries and fails to synthesize an overarching narrative or argument.

Harmon’s dedication as a collector will be appreciated by any audiophile, but his essays lack cohesion and continuity, making the collection feel too insular.

@WAR The Rise of the MilitaryInternet Complex

Harris, Shane Eamon Dolan/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (304 pp.) $27.00 | Nov. 11, 2014 978-0-544-25179-3

Sprawling account of how the U.S. military joined forces with the National Security Agency to develop “cyber warfare” capabilities, monitoring America’s enemies and its citizens alike.

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“Science-fiction readers and Harrison devotees will garner the most pleasure from this heartfelt autobiography.” from harry harrison! harry harrison!

Foreign Policy senior writer Harris (The Watchers: The Rise of America’s Surveillance State, 2010) takes an unabashedly admiring tone, fascinated by the dedication of elite NSA “hackers” and the secretive technology they’ve developed, initially tested against terror networks in Iraq and Afghanistan. He focuses on the dynamic personalities whose expertise allowed them to move between the Bush and Obama administrations, such as NSA chiefs Mike McConnell and Keith Alexander, whose philosophy relied on “effectively declaring U.S. cyberspace a militarized zone.” McConnell had advocated the merger of warfighting and surveillance into the US Cyber Command, officially inaugurated in 2010. Many politicians had by then concluded “the NSA was the only game in town, because it was the only agency with an extensive catalog of threat signatures, including malware, hacker techniques, and suspect Internet addresses.”

Harris argues that the NSA’s aggressive and intrusive stance is warranted by the diverse threats aimed at American interests in cyberspace, ranging from retaliatory attacks from Iran (whose nuclear program was famously compromised by the Stuxnet computer worm) to widespread industrial espionage committed by China. This issue is viewed so urgently that the NSA has partnered with many tech corporations, like Google and Cisco, demonstrating in classified briefings that “China had penetrated the computer networks of defense contractors and other US companies.” Harris adeptly documents the online threats directed at American society, ranging from the Chinese military’s well-funded hacking cells to large-scale information thefts committed by international crime syndicates, but he also demonstrates the NSA’s insatiable collection of metadata and preparation of “backdoor” cyberweapons for future use, concluding that “[a]nonymity and collective security may be incompatible in cyberspace.”

A well-researched overview made less engaging by an uncritical stance and jargon-heavy approach.

HARRY HARRISON! HARRY HARRISON!

Harrison, Harry Tor (352 pp.) $25.99 | Nov. 4, 2014 978-0-7653-3308-7

The life and 60-year career of an award-winning science-fiction writer.

Harrison’s (1925-2012) posthumously published memoir begins with his birth in Depression-era Stamford, Connecticut, and his upbringing in Queens, New York. He only briefly describes his youth before chronicling his drafting into the U.S. Army Air Force, a time which offered little pleasure save for a lecture on the international language of Esperanto, which would endure as a lifelong interest for Harrison. Courting a fascination with both writing and ink illustrations, the author procured work with comic-book publishers (where he honed his “variegated skills”), consorted with industry contemporaries, and went on to edit pulp magazines, leading to his true calling: |

science fiction. Together with his wife, Joan, Harrison became characteristically nomadic, relocating from city to city, soaking up local culture, freelancing, and eventually growing fidgety in locales like New York, Mexico and Britain. He then spent time fine-tuning novels and writing Flash Gordon scripts in Italy and Denmark, followed by teaching and lecturing in San Diego until a final return to the U.K. The author’s best adventures and opinions can surely be found in this entertainingly animated chronicle. It is through his many physical relocations that the anecdotes, vignettes and sage wisdom flow freely, affording fans an intimate glance into the author’s personality while exposing him as not just a science-fiction writer, but a witty raconteur as well. The author of numerous novels (Make Room! Make Room!), short stories and popular SF series (Stainless Steel Rat), Harrison’s prolific, distinguished oeuvre speaks for itself, as does this witty memoir, which leaves no doubts about who Harrison was, how he lived, and what inspired him to write, explore and imagine.

Science-fiction readers and Harrison devotees will garner the most pleasure from this heartfelt autobiography.

FIRE AND MOVEMENT The British Expeditionary Force and the Campaign of 1914 Hart, Peter Oxford Univ. (480 pp.) $34.95 | Oct. 31, 2014 978-0-19-998927-0

An accessible scholarly history of how the British Expeditionary Force found its legs during the first months of World War I. Imperial War Museum oral historian Hart (The Great War: A Combat History of the First World War, 2013, etc.) has combed the archives for firsthand witnesses to the fraught first decisions and movements by the British and French armies to check the aggression across Europe of imperial Germany and AustroHungary. Traditionally enjoying maritime supremacy, Britain had to take stock as Germany began to build up its own fleet and massive continental army in accordance with the thinking of Gen. Albert von Schlieffen, as well as his successor, Gen. Helmuth von Moltke (the Younger), that the way to knock out France quickly was to move laterally through Belgium and Luxembourg. German aggression forced Britain to ally with France in the signing of the Anglo-French entente in 1906. This contributed to the secretive building up of a BEF under the direction of Gen. Sir Henry Wilson to “stand alongside the French.”

The British had learned much about modern warfare since the Boer War of 1899-1902: The cavalry was on the wane and the machine gun on the rise, while important British generals continued to emerge, including Sir John French and Sir Douglas Haig. Moreover, “close-order attacks” had ended, the system of trenches was developed, and the “movement” of men was achieved over open ground by heavy covering “fire” (hence Hart’s title). Indeed, the BEF (made up of many Irish and kirkus.com

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colonial recruits) proved itself a valiant foe against the larger German onslaught, from the battles of Mons in August through Ypres in late October, the race to the sea and the halted British retreat. Dispelling close-held myths, Hart presents extracts from diaries and letters by soldiers and officers for an in-themoment account.

A World War I authority offers a focused, organized, evenhanded work of research.

YOU’RE NOT LOST IF YOU CAN STILL SEE THE TRUCK The Further Adventures of America’s Everyman Outdoorsman

Heavey, Bill Atlantic Monthly (304 pp.) $25.00 | Dec. 9, 2014 978-0-8021-2302-2

Field and Stream editor-at-large Heavey (It’s Only Slow Food Until You Try to Eat It: Misadventures of a Suburban Hunter-Gatherer, 2014, etc.) compiles another group of humorous and thought-provoking essays on what it means to be an outdoorsman.

The date range of the pieces begins in 1988 and ends in 2014.

The author’s extensive knowledge of the natural world is evident in each story, whether he’s in a blind shooting canvasback ducks on Chesapeake Bay, fishing a stream in West Virginia or preparing for a deer hunt in Kansas. He brings readers into the immediate action with his vivid descriptions, quick wit and honest assessment of each situation. On catching bowhunting fever: “ ‘Hooked’ would be an understatement. I was filleted, battered, and deep-fried....I loved the feeling of stored energy in the bow’s limbs as the let-off kicked in, the Zen of relaxed strength, the way you maintain form and look the arrow home after it has sprung from the bow....In my dreams, every branch in the forest turned into antlers.” Heavey also brings readers into his personal story of grief and renewal with his chronicle of a series of touching events that provides a more rounded view of an individual best known for his wild adventures in the woods and waterways of America. Whether he’s trying to catch the largest trout, bag the biggest buck, finally learning to accept his father or navigating the rules of online dating, Heavey demonstrates the importance of the intent behind the action over the actual outcome. Readers will sense that it’s possible to fail at your mission and still have a grand time if you don’t take yourself too seriously. “Every so often,” he writes, “I take stock of the jerks, losers, and whack jobs who are my friends and resolve to associate with a higher caliber of people.”

Amusing and candid stories of a rich life lived in the natural world.

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WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN? Selected Essays

Hofmann, Michael Farrar, Straus and Giroux (304 pp.) $27.00 | Dec. 2, 2014 978-0-374-25996-9 A noted critic celebrates the arts.

In this vibrant collection of previously published essays, poet, critic and translator Hofmann (Poetry and Translation/Univ. of Florida; Selected Poems, 2009, etc.) elevates criticism to an art. He amply fulfills his aim to “investigate and animate” his subjects, “make them resonate, play with and in and over them....” Many of those subjects are poets, including Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell, Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney, Basil Bunting and John Berryman. But Hofmann also extends his “noticings” to painter Max Beckmann, writer and artist Kurt Schwitters, and Austrian playwrights Arthur Schnitzler and Thomas Bernhard.

He considers Gunter Grass’ belated admission of SS membership (“The horrible suspicion arises that Grass’ deepest project here is the destruction of meaning. Not so much ‘peeling the onion’ as ‘applying the whitewash’ ”). Hofmann also reflects on Antonioni’s movie The Passenger, “a mystery or a mystification” that he found especially powerful. Among the most luminous essays are those responding to poets and their work. The Bishop-Lowell correspondence, writes Hofmann, reads like “an epistolary novel” that reveals “an ideally balanced, ideally complex account of a friendship, a race, a decades-long conspiracy, a dance (say, a tango?).” Bishop emerges as the more sympathetic of the two, offering “arresting and beautiful observations” and genuine interest in her friend; Lowell, on the other hand, “seems to endow even people quite close to him...with very little reality.” An admiring essay on Bishop notes her reticence to engage in the confessional poetry in which Lowell indulged, but an equally admiring essay on Lowell calls him “heroic.” “To say that anyone who cares about poetry should read Lowell is not enough....

Anyone who cares about writing, or about art, or about life, should read Lowell.”

As these passionate essays attest, Hofmann cares deeply: about writing, art and the creative possibilities of criticism.

TED AND I A Brother’s Memoir

Hughes, Gerald Dunne/St. Martin’s (240 pp.) $25.99 | Dec. 2, 2014 978-1-250-04527-0

A warm recollection of a lauded poet.

Hughes and his younger siblings, Olwyn and Ted, grew up in a Yorkshire village, moving to the mining town of Mexborough when Ted was 8 and the author 18. As young children, the two boys shared a love of the outdoors, camping in the woods, hunting with air rifles and |

“Ten vibrant cities across the globe tell the story of British imperialism in terms more nuanced and complicated than simply being good or bad.” from cities of empire

especially fishing. Ted followed his older brother around devotedly, constantly asking questions. In Mexborough, though, their paths diverged, with the author leaving school to work in the wholesale clothing business, as a trainee fitter at the Bessemer Steel Works and, after an injury, as an auto mechanic. Olwyn and Ted, meanwhile, excelled in grammar school, won scholarships and headed to university. After serving in the Royal Air Force during World War II, the author decided to begin training with the Nottingham City Police Force. Discouraged by poor food and housing, he decided to leave for Australia, seduced by a travel agent’s advertisement that read, “Come to the sun: migrate to Australia.” He settled there for the rest of his life. From 1948 until Ted’s death in 1998, the brothers saw each other only sporadically. Ted, of course, became famous for his poetry—he was poet laureate of England for 14 years—and his marriage to Sylvia Plath, which ended in her suicide. The author never met Plath, but he includes letters from his family describing their delight with her but also some concerns.

Although Sylvia and Ted apparently were happy, they seemed not as “lively and cheery” as the author and his wife. Though he does not provide any analysis of his brother’s work, Hughes reprints some of Ted’s poems that have links to family experiences and notes works in his Collected Poems that are rooted in their childhood.

Most of this understated memoir recounts the author’s experiences and affection for his family, with some privileged glimpses into Ted’s life.

BEST FOOD WRITING 2014

Hughes, Holly—Ed. Da Capo/Perseus (352 pp.) $15.99 paper | Nov. 1, 2014 978-0-7382-1791-8

The 14th installment of a series known for dynamic, immersive food writing.

Longtime editor Hughes was challenged with the task of scouring books and magazines for “thoughtful, meaty” material while being a humble sentinel at her dying brother’s bedside. The entertaining essays she’s collected range in theme from home cooking, extreme palates and industrialized product developments to Cronuts and pickled baloney. A section on contemporary food trends examines the dust-up over big flavors and $4 toast being elevated to the “artisanal plane.” Particularly savory and eye-opening pieces include an entomophagist’s ingestion of insects as a source of both concentrated nutrition and inspiration; investigative journalist Barry Estabrook’s list of five foods plagued by historically questionable sanitization histories and overfarming; and a short report on Monsanto’s unsettlingly futuristic vegetable crossbreeding. Updates on prison commissary provisions and the sensationalized “last meal” as an “irresistible blend of food, death, and crime that drives a commercial and voyeuristic cottage industry” are also especially riveting. Among the more charmingly insightful gastronomical |

nuggets are John Birdsall’s perky analysis of American cuisine’s ostensive “gay sensibility,” food columnist J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s mouthwatering anatomy of a chocolate chip cookie and an exotic tour of street food in Asia from former Men’s Health food editor Matt Goulding. Humor and compassion, which Hughes admits sustained her throughout the book’s editing process, appear in satisfying doses in essays by self-taught baker Irvin Lin’s hilariously tongue-in-cheek recipe for boiling water, memories of homemade ketchup by David Leite and beloved New England novelist Ann Hood’s rediscovery of tomato pie. For Hughes, this particular edition of thoughtful food pondering “offered its own path of healing and comfort.”

Consistent in quality and enthusiasm, Hughes again delivers a cornucopia of varietal amusements for foodophiles whose palates crave invigorating interpretations and perspectives.

CITIES OF EMPIRE The British Colonies and the Creation of the Urban World

Hunt, Tristram Metropolitan/Henry Holt (544 pp.) $35.00 | Nov. 25, 2014 978-0-8050-9308-7

Ten vibrant cities across the globe tell the story of British imperialism in terms more nuanced and complicated than simply being good or bad.

British historian and Labour Party education spokesman Hunt (History/Univ. of London; Marx’s General: The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels, 2009, etc.) finds Niall Ferguson’s Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World (2003) too focused on the “heroic age of Victorian achievement.” Hunt offers a broader, more inclusive approach to the history of British imperial ambition through the evolving institutions, architecture, economies and mores of the empire’s far-flung transplanted urbanism, from the 17th century to today. Most of the cities are ports (save New Delhi) and evolved from specific strategic and financial exigencies on the British empire at a specific point in time: Bustling Boston represented the maritime empire’s more “benign and flexible connotations” (until the Revolution); Bridgetown, Barbados, avidly promoted the export economy through sugar production and the slave trade, allowing the wealthy plantocracy to stock their houses with all manner of fancy British goods. In the 1780s and ’90s, Dublin symbolized the enthusiasm for a unifying colonial relationship, however directed by a “narrow urban elite.” Cape Town, wrested from the Dutch, offered by its wondrous geography an imperial supremacy after the Seven Years’ War, while Calcutta symbolized “a colonial citadel which cemented Britain’s ‘Swing to the East.’ ” Hunt takes great pains to underscore the important, changeable relationship between settlers and the indigenous peoples. For example, in Melbourne in the late 19th century, the Aborigines were deemed too backward for “redemption” kirkus.com

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and thus were excluded from discussions on how to govern the colony. In moneymaking Bombay, the symbol of Britain’s capacity for technological and administrative progress, the multiethnic residents played an enormous role in creating the urban landscape. Throughout the book, Hunt ably demonstrates how these cities and their colonizations contributed to the development of urbanism.

A well-documented, evenhanded work that will delight urban scholars and lay travelers.

WATCH ME A Memoir

Huston, Anjelica Scribner (400 pp.) $26.99 | Nov. 11, 2014 978-1-4767-6034-6

The second and final volume of the celebrated actress’s memoir charts her beginnings as an actress and director, her emotional gains and losses, and the births and deaths that affected her.

In her first volume (A Story Lately Told: Coming of Age in Ireland, London, and New York, 2013), Huston focused on her childhood and her emergence as a fashion model while growing up the daughter of John Huston, the legendary director and actor.

That volume had an airy superficiality that continues here, as well. The author includes myriad details about the parties she attended, the designer fashions she wore, the celebrities she hung with (Robert Duvall and Bill Murray) and the colleagues she liked (Drew Barrymore, John Cusack). This can become eye-glazing, but Huston does provide some remarkable passages. She tells about her tempestuous relationship with Ryan O’Neal (who physically abused her), her long on-and-off-andon-again affair with Jack Nicholson (who could not, it seems, manage fidelity—though Huston also confesses to a number of her own transgressions). She fell in love with—and married— sculptor Robert Graham; the author pauses occasionally to tell us about some of his notable works. She also talks about many of her film roles, including her Oscar-winning performance (supporting actress) in Prizzi’s Honor, starring Nicholson and directed by her father. She shares some anecdotes about the casts and crews she worked with (sometimes—as in Wes Anderson’s The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou—she emerged with hurt feelings). But the most powerful segments concern the decline and death of her father—and, later, of her husband. Here, Huston stares directly into life’s horrors and does not blink. There’s a brief passage, as well, about her tangential involvement in Roman Polanski’s 1977 legal troubles.

Amid the fluff and the flutter are some true passion and pain.

THE GREAT REFORMER Francis and the Making of a Radical Pope

Ivereigh, Austen Henry Holt (464 pp.) $32.00 | Nov. 18, 2014 978-1-62779-157-1

An admiring defense of the new pope, who is not afraid to shake things up.

A British journalist and co-founder of the worldwide media project Catholic Voices, Ivereigh brushes aside any “false idea” that the former Argentine Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio (b. 1936) ever held conservative views and takes great pains to show he has been a lifelong reformer. When he was ordained a priest in 1969 at the age of 32, Bergoglio was deeply influenced by the reforms instigated by the Second Vatican Council. Moreover, as a young priest, Bergoglio fused important relationships with formative political currents of the day, such as Marxism and Peronism— e.g., he gave “spiritual support” at Salvador University in Buenos Aires to leaders of the Guardia de Hierro (“Iron Guard”), which advocated for the original worker-based Peronist platform.

Ivereigh insists that Bergoglio’s sympathy for the “popular values of the pueblo fiel did not make him a party activist.” During the so-called Dirty War in Argentina of the late 1970s, many close to the priest were “disappeared,” and the author asserts that Bergoglio actively worked to protect the victims and fellow Jesuits, contrary to the barbs launched by Horacio Verbitsky in his book El Silencio. Yet Ivereigh also notes Bergoglio’s ability to “play his cards very close to his chest.” Always eager to put forth a pastoral rather than ideological approach, Bergoglio is a deeply intuitive and well-read teacher, constantly warning against “worldliness” and increasingly attuned to charismatic spirituality. The author maintains that Bergoglio is a master of forging consensus—e.g., in the wrangling over the Argentinian same-sex legislation of 2010; he officially denounced it but left open a possibility of “revising and extending the concept of civil unions.” Elected to the papacy in February 2013, Francis promises to continue forging his particular brand of humility and resoluteness.

A quick, efficient job of fairly sketching this extraordinary life.

THE ART OF STILLNESS Adventures in Going Nowhere

Iyer, Pico Simon & Schuster (120 pp.) $14.99 | $7.99 e-book | Nov. 4, 2014 978-1-4767-8472-4 978-1-4767-8473-1 e-book A brief, spiritually minded book that offers practical wisdom on reducing stress through stillness.

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The latest from Iyer (The Man Within My Head, 2012, etc.) can fit in a pocket and be read in one sitting. As a prolific journalist for Time magazine and a travel writer, the author experienced frequent exhilaration but also discovered that he “was racing around so much that I never had the chance to see where I was going, or to check whether I was truly happy. Indeed, hurrying around in search of contentment seemed a perfect way of ensuring I’d never be settled or content.” This book isn’t a meditation guide or a New-Age tract but rather a celebration of the age-old practice of sitting with no goal in mind and no destination in sight. He frames this collection of interrelated essays with the example of songwriter/poet Leonard Cohen, “my hero since boyhood,” who retreated into a monk’s remove and has returned to peak popularity and extensive, exhaustive touring, through his 70s, in three-hour concerts that “felt as if the whole spellbound crowd was witnessing something of the monastery, the art that stillness deepens.” Iyer offers plenty of suggestions for those inspired to go deeper into the practice, but the book and the act of reading it offer a prescriptive that is tough to deny: “In an age of speed, I began to think, nothing could be more invigorating than going slow. In an age of distraction, nothing can feel more luxurious than paying attention.

And in an age of constant movement, nothing is more urgent than sitting still.”

Rather than reading it quickly and filing it, readers will likely slow down to meet its pace and might continue carrying it around as a reminder.

DIRTY OLD LONDON The Victorian Fight Against Filth

Jackson, Lee Yale Univ. (304 pp.) $38.00 | Nov. 25, 2014 978-0-300-19205-6

Victorianist Jackson (Walking Dickens’ London, 2012) demonstrates the unimaginable filth that permeated London during the 19th century.

During the industrial age, it was not just dust and smoke from factories that affected life in the city; in fact, 19th-century reformers felt that was just a part of life. London was plagued year-round by manure, ash, mud and rotten garbage, and the summer months, which “created their own obnoxious cocktail,” were especially bad. The generally accepted thought was that the source of sickness, including cholera and typhus epidemics, was miasma, the foul smell of degrading organic material.

The sewers and cesspools of London continually overflowed, and while the “night soil” men pumped out waste and sold it for fertilizer, they couldn’t keep up with a population that increased sixfold in the period from 1800 to 1900. Finally, with Edwin Chadwick (1800-1890) leading the sanitary movement, a great sewer project was built to divert raw sewage and eliminate cesspools. The situation regarding ash and cinders ran into a similar problem, as dustmen sold the waste from coal fires to |

brick makers but couldn’t keep up with the population explosion. Reformers managed to curtail the output of smoke from the many factories, but the domestic grate of a “man’s castle” continued to fowl the air well into the 20th century. The author thoroughly covers the various pollutants plaguing the city, including the most prevalent in the early years: manure. London required 300,000 horses to keep the city moving, and their manure, mixed with ash and mud, created a vile substance covering nearly every street.

A well-researched, if unpalatable, picture of a filthy city and the different factions fighting for and against reform using class distinctions, gender inequality and horrendous poor laws. Jackson strongly warns us that the problem isn’t solved; the great sewer project is desperately outdated, and the “clean air” is anything but.

SOUND MAN A Life Recording Hits with the Rolling Stones, the Who, Led Zeppelin, the Eagles, Eric Clapton, the Faces...

Johns, Glyn Blue Rider Press (320 pp.) $27.95 | Nov. 13, 2014 978-0-399-16387-6

A matter-of-fact memoir by the renowned record producer.

Known for his work with the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, the Who, the Eagles, and Crosby, Stills and Nash, Johns seems like a modest guy with a strong work ethic, self-effacing to a fault. And he’s not much for gossip, which means most of the secrets and scandals from these tempestuous artists are not illuminated here. As he explains of the recording of the Beatles’ “Let It Be,” where fissures turned into large cracks, “[i]t is not my place to discuss any detail of what happened, but it is common knowledge that George [Harrison] left the band and was persuaded to return a couple of days later.” The author does acknowledge that Yoko Ono’s presence was a little intrusive, but that’s common knowledge as well. Readers looking for previously unrevealed dirt will be disappointed, as Johns isn’t looking to grind any axes or settle scores. His revelations mainly concern himself, such as the fact that “most find it incomprehensible to believe that I was completely straight and in fact have never taken drugs of any sort. Other than the odd aspirin.”

Little wonder, then, that his favorite Rolling Stone was his onetime roommate Ian Stewart, the pianist who wasn’t deemed rock ’n’ roll enough by the band’s manager, and that he didn’t get on well with Keith Richards or Eric Clapton during the depths of their addictions. “I have yet to meet a heroin addict that I would choose to have any kind of social intercourse with let alone a creative relationship,” he writes, “and I’m sure the feeling would be mutual.” Though the book traces the arc of a halfcentury’s worth of impressive studio credits, one never gets the sense of what distinguishes his studio approach and generated so many hit singles and classic albums. kirkus.com

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“An engrossing examination of how archaeologists recreate much of human history, piece by painstaking piece.” from lives in ruins

LIVES IN RUINS Archaeologists and the Seductive Lure of Human Rubble

Johns comes across as an amiable guy who got lucky, and there must be more to it than that.

THE CHURCHILL FACTOR How One Man Made History

Johnson, Boris Riverhead (288 pp.) $27.95 | Nov. 13, 2014 978-1-59463-302-7

London mayor Johnson (Johnson’s Life of London: The People Who Made the City that Made the World, 2012, etc.) takes a look at the quintessential British leader and his massively widespread influence

on global affairs.

The author studies how this one incredible man played some role in every war from the Boer War to the Cold War. Young Churchill was effectively ignored by his aristocratic father and received little attention from his American-born mother. Nonetheless, he developed an incredible ego and belief in his own prowess. Of course, he wasn’t actually perfect and made plenty of mistakes, many of which Johnson covers in a delightful chapter called “Winston Churchill and the Art of Surviving the Cataclysmic Cock-Up.” The author attempts to explore the personality of Churchill and how he reacted to situations. Though his drinking was legion, Johnson points out that, on the other hand, Hitler was a teetotaler, “a deformity that accounts for much misery.” Churchill possessed a gambler’s temperament, fearing no risk, and he was also a weathervane for political thought. From his father, who was unrepentantly disloyal, he inherited his disdain of party loyalty, and he made it his life’s work to make his name one of the most significant in political and diplomatic history. In his dealings with Hitler, Johnson refers to him as “the crowbar of destiny,” since “[i]f he hadn’t...put up resistance, that Nazi train would have carried right on.” As the author demonstrates, Churchill still affects us all, from the makeup of the Middle East (he coined the phrase) to the Cold War and the European Union—not to mention the prodigious amount of writing he left behind.

Despite the author’s drifts into hagiography and occasionally contrived prose (“his dentition was assisted by artifice”), reading about Churchill is always a delight, and Johnson is an accomplished, accessible writer.

Johnson, Marilyn Harper/HarperCollins (272 pp.) $25.99 | Nov. 11, 2014 978-0-06-212718-1

Science reporter Johnson (This Book Is Overdue!: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All, 2010, etc.) explores the work of archaeologists.

In her latest endeavor, the author, who makes a habit of looking into atypical subjects and then writing about them with brio and dash, takes on the discipline of archaeology, which is on a bit of a hot streak, thanks to technological advances, war, commercial development, violent weather and warming temperatures, all doing their parts to reveal our past. On her journeys, Johnson attended a field-training school—on St. Eustatius in the Caribbean—where she received a glimmering of how backbreaking, tedious work can be imbued with high suspense. Throughout, she demonstrates a learned hand in her minibiographies of various practitioners of the discipline—e.g., Joan Connelly of New York University, who told the author, “Good archaeology fills in the blanks of history. It tells the losers’ story. It teases out the history that falls between the cracks.” Much like Mary Roach, another sharp writer who often tackles a single topic, Johnson casts her net widely, from the Caribbean to Stony Brook and Fishkill, New York, to the Pine Barrens of New Jersey to Agios Georgios, a small village in Greece. However, she’s also mesmerized by the smaller-scale elements: gorgeous blue beads from the wreck of an old galleon, the never-ending steam of lectures and conferences (“The audience at an archaeology lecture is ancient. I watched them stream in, drawn to slides of artifacts and talk of ruins: snowy-haired, with canes and sensible shoes.

They listened with hunger”) and the pure, magical allure of the lost: “significant sites that are so humble in appearance, or buried, or otherwise hidden.”

An engrossing examination of how archaeologists recreate much of human history, piece by painstaking piece.

(First printing of 35,000)

THE YEAR OF LIVING VIRTUOUSLY Weekends Off

Jordan, Teresa Counterpoint (224 pp.) $23.00 | Dec. 16, 2014 978-1-61902-427-4

Thoughtful reflections on virtue and vice.

Prompted by her 2010 blog of the same name, native Wyoming writer Jordan (Field Notes from Yosemite, 2003, etc.) collects various postings and essays inspired by Benjamin Franklin’s list of 13 virtues.

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Franklin’s aspiration, undertaken in his early 20s, was to attempt “the bold and arduous project of arriving at moral perfection.” Jordan’s yearlong expository expedition led her to examine morality on a weekly basis—notably with “weekends off ”—through a “weave of story and science.” What “started as a way to practice writing,” Jordan admits, led to the greater project of finding “a way to practice life.” Along the way, the author used each of Franklin’s virtues—temperance, silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquility, chastity, humility—and the seven deadly sins—lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, anger, envy, pride—as a springboard for contemplation. Though Jordan’s subjects lend advice aplenty for selfimprovement, these philosophical thoughts stop short of being dogmatic. Jordan successfully incorporates lessons gleaned from formative moments in her own life with those from the biographies of relative unknowns and artists and thinkers as famous as Franklin, and she delves deep, especially in the more extended essays, into the essence of contrasting modes of being. Particularly keen are Jordan’s observations on the seven deadly sins: on envy—“The seven sins are not equal-opportunity tormentors....

Only envy offers no reward. It doesn’t even have to focus on a rival to ruin our day”; gluttony—“Ever since Eve snagged that apple and offered it to Adam, food has been fraught with complication”; pride—“Of all the vices, pride is the most likely to invite debate about whether it is a sin at all.”

Jordan’s engaging collection abounds with provocative inquiry, offering plenty of food for thought.

MARK TWAIN’S AMERICA A Celebration in Words and Images Katz, Harry L.; The Library of Congress Little, Brown (256 pp.) $40.00 | Oct. 21, 2014 978-0-316-20939-7

A richly illustrated life of an American icon.

Former Library of Congress curator Katz (Civil War Sketch Book, 2012, etc.) has reached deeply into the library’s archives for this commemoration of the enormously popular and prolific author. Besides offering a detailed—if familiar—narrative of Twain’s work, family and personality, Katz traces social, political and economic changes from 1850, when Twain first began publishing, until his death in 1910. After a few years in newspaper work in Hannibal, Missouri, 20-year-old Samuel Clemens set out to become a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi, but when the Civil War stopped river traffic, he decided to avoid the conflict by heading West. In Nevada and California, he became a miner, prospector and newspaper reporter, all while writing his own stories. His tall tale “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” published in 1865 under his pen name, won accolades, leading to a multicity lecture tour. A political and cultural gadfly, Twain “challenged monarchies, autocracies, plutocracies, and leaders of the civilized world to free, educate, and employ their subjects,” writes Katz. “He railed against his Christian |

God...for fostering ignorance and suffering, creating havoc in the lives of humankind.” He became “a cultural lightning rod” and an outspoken shaper of public opinion. Twain loved performing, but he also depended on tours for money. Notoriously bad with finances, he repeatedly made unsound investments and ended up in debt, despite his book earnings. By the time The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn appeared in 1885—generating immediate controversy—Twain had already cemented his reputation with Innocents Abroad (1869), Roughing It (1872), The Gilded Age (1873), The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), and volumes of stories and sketches.

Written with verve, Katz’s history is distinguished from a trove of Twain biographies by its 300 illustrations, including photographs, cartoons and artwork, drawn from the LOC’s inestimable collection. (4-color photos throughout)

PRAYER Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God

Keller, Timothy Dutton (336 pp.) $26.95 | Nov. 4, 2014 978-0-525-95414-9

A popular pastor puts the Bible back in prayer and sets the stage for an informed conversation with God. Keller (Encounters with Jesus: Unexpected Answers to Life’s Biggest Questions, 2013, etc.) brings his considerable biblical, historical and literary knowledge to bear on the concept of prayer. The best-selling author of titles like The Reason for God and The Prodigal God shines an intellectual light on a topic that is more often discussed in mystical terms. For Keller, prayer is not only an inner experience of God, but also a true conversation requiring significant preparation and practice.

Founder of Manhattan’s fast-growing Redeemer Presbyterian Church, Keller knows that his audience contains sophisticated Christians looking for more than simple daily devotions to guide their spiritual practices. They want context, and Keller enthusiastically obliges. Citing Scripture first and foremost— references to New Testament passages could keep a Bible study group busy for years—Keller also draws ideas from philosophers, theologians, scholars and other authors throughout the meticulously documented text. C.S. Lewis makes frequent appearances, as do St. Augustine, Martin Luther and John Calvin. This reliance on other sources of authority lends weight to Keller’s arguments but comes at some cost to storytelling.

Keller offers occasional anecdotes to illustrate his points, but on paper, his words lack the engaging cadence of the sermons that draw thousands to his church each week. Instead of offering a ready-made answer to the question of how we should pray, he calls on students to do their own work, giving them tons of material on the meaning of prayer before he offers any how-to advice. When instruction does come, it’s not simple but careful, as in Keller’s word-by-word examination of the familiar Lord’s Prayer. For the author, building a solid foundation of kirkus.com

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“These incisive, deeply informed essays speak to the power of literature to illuminate, and transform, the world.” from rocket and lightship

SPAM NATION The Inside Story of Organized Cybercrime—from Global Epidemic to Your Front Door

understanding is an essential step in the journey toward an enlightened experience of God. Not always riveting reading, but Keller provides a contextually rich guide and companion to prayer.

ROCKET AND LIGHTSHIP Essays on Literature and Ideas

Kirsch, Adam Norton (304 pp.) $26.95 | Nov. 17, 2014 978-0-393-24346-8

A critic asks why literature matters.

In this collection of 19 essays, New Republic senior editor Kirsch (Why Trilling Matters, 2011, etc.) considers the cultural work of literature, complicating Matthew Arnold’s comment that poetry is “at bottom a criticism of life.” Focusing on writers as diverse as Italian poet Giacomo Leopardi, German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk, and critics Walter Benjamin and Susan Sontag, Kirsch maintains that all literature expresses “the writer’s experience of being in the world, of his aspirations and expectations and anxieties.” These essays reflect on both the writer’s and reader’s contexts, illuminating their complexities. In an analysis of Sontag’s work, for example, Kirsch argues that Cynthia Ozick, who saw in Sontag “the stylish barbarism of the sixties,” and Camille Paglia, who castigated Sontag as a self-absorbed elitist, both were right if one considers the intellectual transformations evident in Sontag’s essays and journals.

Kirsch is a contributing editor for Tablet, a magazine of Jewish arts and letters, and he focuses on Jewish identity in several essays: an intellectual portrait of Hannah Arendt; a consideration of Alfred Kazin’s literary history and journals; an overview of Ozick’s fiction and filial relationship to Henry James; and an analysis of Proust’s affinity to his contemporary, Russian poet Chaim Nachman Bialik. Proust and Bialik, Kirsch asserts, tried “to reconstitute the kind of absolute authority which is missing from the secular world....[B]oth are performing the modernist leap of faith, which attempts to make art itself an independent value.” The value of literature lies in its presentation of an opportunity for transcendence. In the title essay, Kirsch reveals his own anxieties about the future of literature. “Writers used to write for posterity—that is, for people essentially like us in the future.” But future readers, he conjectures, “will understand us wholly differently, and much better, than we can understand ourselves.”

These incisive, deeply informed essays speak to the power of literature to illuminate, and transform, the world.

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Krebs, Brian Sourcebooks (272 pp.) $24.99 | Nov. 18, 2014 978-1-4022-9561-4

How once-harmless Internet advertising developed into the dangerously intrusive inbox enemy it is today.

Former Washington Post reporter and current Web security analyst Krebs addresses the threat of email spam as much more than simply an online nuisance; rather, it’s the byproduct of fully functioning “virtual pirate coves of the Internet” trafficking illegal goods and services to unsuspecting users. His nuanced detective work uncovered corrupt business practices at rogue pharmaceutical sites (an industry which a large portion of email spam promotes). Digging deeper, he discovered a global conspiracy targeting just about anyone with an email address. Krebs’ guided tour of the cybercriminal underworld is a cautionary tale about menacing cultures of hackers, spammers and duplicitous digital network “cybercrooks”—e.g., shifty Russian e-commerce mogul Pavel Vrublevsky, whom the author surprised with a perilous, impromptu in-person meeting at his home in Moscow. Krebs’ background in cybersleuthing (he broke the story on the late-2013 Target credit-card database breach) is maximally utilized in chapters covering how “bulletproof hosting networks” and their integrated, parasitic “botnets” disseminate spam across scores of email addresses while frenetic anti-spam groups deploy ingenious counteroffensive tactics. The author analyzes how and why spammers become lucrative by tracing e-payment brokers directly to the illegal online pharmacy websites they contract with and expanding outward to the covert spamming networks like the notorious Russian Business Network and other underground factions based in the former Soviet states. Krebs admits it was his vigilante investigations into these types of criminals that sabotaged his 14-year tenure with the Post. For lay readers, an effectively revealing closing chapter offers tips on how anyone can safeguard their personal online information from hacker infiltration.

An eye-opening, immensely distressing exposé on the current state of organized cyberspammers.

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WINNING THE LONG GAME How Strategic Leaders Shape the Future

Krupp, Steven; Schoemaker, Paul J.H. PublicAffairs (336 pp.) $27.99 | Dec. 2, 2014 978-1-61039-447-5

A nondescript business book advocating strategic thinking in a time of VUCA, militarese for “an environment of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity,” coined to describe a post–Cold War world of known knowns, known unknowns and so forth.

For Krupp and Schoemaker (Brilliant Mistakes: Finding Success on the Far Side of Failure, 2011, etc.), executives in Decision Strategies International—for which this book is a transparent calling card—that describes the world of business as well. Much of the authors’ advice is obvious: A strategic leader hires people who “think outside the box,” looks at a variety of data in a variety of ways and then interprets those data rather than selects them to fit pre-existing theories or policies, and learns from failure. The book is most useful in its choices of examples: Donald Trump and Lee Iacocca may wait in the wings, but Oprah Winfrey and Nelson Mandela are on center stage, while the authors’ case studies include everything from George Bush’s misguided “mission accomplished” meshugas to Microsoft’s near-catastrophic failure to divine the advent of the online world. On the latter score, the authors wisely observe, “[o]nce a company becomes the master of its own universe, as Microsoft was with respect to operatingsystem software, seeing new developments in adjacent markets becomes harder.” More useful, but not plentiful enough, are more extensive discussions on failures and successes. Regarding the former, a solid example was the dismal rollout of the Obama administration’s healthcare.gov, which serves as a textbook example of “dysfunctional dynamics....lack of teamwork at the beginning undermined the healthcare reform that the Obama administration considers one of its seminal achievements.”

For the CEO, actual or aspiring, who hasn’t yet lived and thought through strategic forecasting and problemsolving—no worse than most business books but nothing outside the box, either.

MODERNITY BRITAIN 1957-1962

Kynaston, David Bloomsbury (912 pp.) $40.00 | Dec. 2, 2014 978-1-62040-809-4

Covering just five years in more than 900 pages, British historian Kynaston (Family Britain, 1951-1957, 2009, etc.) continues his sprawling study of Britain from the end of World War II to the rise of Margaret Thatcher. |

The present volume opens in 1957, when the grimness of postwar belt-tightening had finally given way to something of a boom. The author wisely and subtly brackets that year and the closing year of his volume with music, Tommy Steele (“Britain’s first rock ’n’ roll star”) on one side and the Beatles on the other.

Attractive though this book is for anyone interested in the social history of modern Britain, Kynaston is more concerned with the concrete details of daily life—literally. In much of the narrative, the author documents Britain’s efforts both to modernize and to provide adequate housing for a growing population. “[D]uring the 1950s,” he writes, “well over two million new dwellings had been added to the national housing stock and almost 300,000 old houses demolished.” But that wasn’t nearly enough, and tied into the housing shortage were issues of race and class, with one major race riot in Notting Hill linked to the arrival in an all-white public-housing neighborhood of a Pakistani family. Strife is a constant in Kynaston’s pages, but so is aspiration, with an exploding population of university students and of the social services to accommodate them, a modest but growing movement to press for gay and minority civil rights, and a general loosening of the primness of yesteryear, as exemplified by the lifting of the ban on D.H. Lawrence’s 1928 novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover—which didn’t happen until 1960. Kynaston peppers his narrative with examples of British unstiff upper lips, complaining about everything from, yes, the ethnicity of one’s neighbors to the grating voices of the Windsors.

From Prince Charles’ boarding school to the rise of Benny Hill: The Britain we know today takes shape in these pages. Monumental and highly readable. (two 16-page b/w inserts)

SEVERED A History of Heads Lost and Heads Found Larson, Frances Liveright/Norton (384 pp.) $27.95 | Nov. 17, 2014 978-0-87140-454-1

Larson (Honorary Research Fellow/ Univ. of Durham; An Infinity of Things: How Sir Henry Wellcome Collected the World, 2009) explores our morbid preoccupation with the grotesque, as typified by the value we place on severed heads.

Not only do severed heads appear in museums and similar collections, but “[v]ideos of beheadings have been uploaded online by terrorists and murderers in recent years and downloaded by millions of Europeans and Americans to watch in their own homes.” The author explains that this book was an offshoot of her interest in how museum collections are curated, but she was soon drawn to a different reality. A skull, she writes, is the tidied-up end product of “the act of decapitation...the brutality that is required to behead a person, and the varied conditions under which that brutality is unleashed.”

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“Another winning biography from Lee. Those who love Fitzgerald’s work will tuck this book right next to her volumes.” from penelope fitzgerald

more a business transaction with representatives of collectors than a pagan religious rite; in the late 19th century, there was “a booming international trade in shrunken heads.” Shakespeare expresses the symbolic power of a severed head—now an object but once the seat of our personhood—when Hamlet contemplates the soul of Yorick. Larson examines beyond the horrific instances of terrorist beheadings of hostages, and she delves into the degraded treatment of dead Japanese soldiers

by American GIs who desecrated their remains. “All the World War II trophy skulls so far recorded by forensic scientists in America are Japanese,” writes Larson, “and there are no records of trophy heads taken in the European theater.” In the author’s opinion, the savagery expressed by these cases was not only occasioned by the brutality of battle conditions, but also by “the intense racial prejudices that informed these conflicts.” In fact, “soldiers often equated their job to hunting animals in the jungle.” Along with the history, the author supplies complementary photographs and illustrations.

An alternately intriguing and disturbing sidelight on our cultural values that is not for the squeamish.

WHY DID THE CHICKEN CROSS THE WORLD? The Epic Saga of the Bird that Powers Civilization

Lawler, Andrew Atria (320 pp.) $26.00 | Dec. 2, 2014 978-1-4767-2989-3

The title tells all in this comprehensive account of how an anti-social south Asian fowl became the world’s favorite food.

Today, there are more than 20 billion chickens, an astonishing number, admits Lawler, a contributing writer for Science magazine and freelance journalist. “Add up the world’s cats, dogs, pigs, and cows and there would still be more chickens,” writes the author. Wondering how it is that such a bird has become so ubiquitous in so many manifestations (from McNuggets to occupying Col. Sanders’ buckets), the author embarked on an epic journey of his own to libraries and universities (where he interviewed various authorities on the bird), cockfights in the Philippines, the jungles of Vietnam, the factory farms now processing the birds for mass consumption, and the animal rights activist who keeps but does not eat her chickens. Lawler also takes readers on a trip into deep history, showing us the natural history of the bird, the difficulties archaeologists have with them (their bones do not often survive long sojourns in the ground), and the religious significance of, especially, the rooster. Lawler examined the chicken carcasses that Darwin studied, and he quotes a Hamlet sentry who mentions a rooster.

He tells about some long-ago uses of bird parts—e.g., the dung of a rooster could cure an ulcerated lung. We learn about weathervanes and how the bird has been roosting in our language: “chicken” (coward), “cock” (well, you know) and others.

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the intricacies of the egg, and he eventually arrives at the moral question: Why do we treat these birds with such profound cruelty? He also acknowledges that chickens’ waste and demands on our resources are nothing like those of pigs and cows.

A splendid book full of obsessive travel and research in history, mythology, archaeology, biology, literature and religion.

PENELOPE FITZGERALD A Life Lee, Hermione Knopf (544 pp.) $35.00 | Nov. 18, 2014 978-0-385-35234-5

Lee (President/Wolfson Coll., Oxford; Biography: A Very Short Introduction, 2009) devotes her considerable talents for biography to Penelope Knox Fitzgerald (1916-2000), who didn’t publish her first book until the age of 58.

The author presents the story of Fitzgerald’s initially charmed life and her days at Oxford in the wildly political 1930s, where she discovered John Ruskin and William Morris, her intellectual heroes. She was preceded at Oxford by her mother, her father, the editor of Punch, and his brothers, and that earlier generation set a standard for intellectual writing that Penelope inherited. Her husband, Desmond Fitzgerald, was equally talented but eventually drank away his career and life. For a time, the couple endured abject poverty, at one point living on an old barge in the Thames. Those two years were the subject of the Booker Prize–winning Offshore (1979), which depicted their perpetually damp home, which required a high tide to flush the toilet. That adventure ended when the boat sank with all her notes and papers. Fortunately for readers, Lee had access to the copious notes Fitzgerald made for each of her books. Even for works of pure fiction, she researched the smallest, seemingly insignificant facts. Lee’s biography will provide a vivid portrait for those who have not encountered Fitzgerald’s work and will prove immensely satisfying for her many fans. The author reproduces pieces of her subject’s writing at (occasionally too-) considerable length, but Fitzgerald’s mastery of phrasing and the beauty of her work should lead readers back to her books, particularly The Bookshop (1977), which was shortlisted for the Booker, or The Blue Flower, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1998.

Another winning biography from Lee. Those who love Fitzgerald’s work will tuck this book right next to her volumes.

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THE BIRTH OF A NATION How a Legendary Filmmaker and a Crusading Editor Reignited America’s Civil War

Lehr, Dick PublicAffairs (368 pp.) $26.99 | Nov. 4, 2014 978-1-58648-987-8

A history of D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1915), which triggered a substantial protest by African-Americans, who resented their vile portrayal in the film.

Former Boston Globe journalist Lehr (Journalism/Boston Univ.; The Fence: A Police Cover-up Along Boston’s Racial Divide, 2009, etc.) reintroduces readers to William Monroe Trotter (1872-1934), a crusading black journalist in Boston who was involved in a number of protest actions against institutional racism. The author frequently alternates the focus between Griffith and Trotter, so we learn their back stories along the way. His two principals were different in just about every way: Trotter’s father, though born into slavery, somehow made his way to Boston; he fought with the 55th and 54th Massachusetts infantries. Trotter went to Harvard and became friends with William Lloyd Garrison and W.E.B. Du Bois. However, jobs were tough to find, so he set up his own newspaper, the Guardian. David Wark Griffith (1875-1948) was from Kentucky, “a child,” writes Lehr, “in search of a bedtime story.” Griffith tried acting, writing and directing, and he pioneered (if not invented, as he claimed) some narrative techniques that directors continue to employ. Trotter, becoming an activist, drew his bead on Booker T. Washington (too accommodating, Trotter thought); Griffith thought Thomas Dixon’s 1905 novel The Clansman (about the heroic KKK) would make a great film. So the clash commenced.

Lehr carefully charts the arcs of the dispute: the behavior of public officials (not good), the protests at the movie theaters, the actions in the courts, the responses of whites (they loved the film) and blacks (who despised it for its view of them as primitives). We learn a lot, as well, about the making and marketing of the film and its uneasy status today.

A powerful rendering of an enduring conflict.

CITIZENS OF THE GREEN ROOM Profiles in Courage and Self-Delusion

Leibovich, Mark Blue Rider Press (320 pp.) $26.95 | Nov. 13, 2014 978-0-399-17192-5

Amusing and perceptive tales of the political animals in the zoo that is Washington, D.C. |

New York Times Magazine chief national correspondent Leibovich (This Town: Two Parties and a Funeral—Plus, Plenty of Valet Parking!—in America’s Gilded Capital, 2013, etc.) presents a collection of previously published profiles of the camera-ready and well-rehearsed “public actors” who populate the modern American political sphere (and “carry themselves with a jumpy expectation that they are being studied at all times”), recounting “the whole unnatural experience that these subjects endure on their daily high wires.” These essays and profiles are uniformly witty, and some are a bit long, befitting the (self-) importance of his subjects. Indeed, Leibovich writes that if vanity and self-celebration were crimes, “the Capitol would be empty.”

The author bemoans politicians’ rejection of candor and reliance on media strategists; as an example, he tells of being summoned by Ted Kennedy Jr. to create a “foundational story” to serve as his announcement of running for office. Throughout the book, Leibovich delivers full-dimensional portraits of these eccentric D.C. denizens, and he expertly puts his finger on a vague sense readers might have about a politician—for instance, how Mitt Romney “emits a kind of pre-traumatic gaffe anxiety at all times.” The author also unmasks the insecurity behind the enormous egotism of bombastic talk show host Chris Matthews, whose profile isn’t so much eviscerating as sharp and perceptive—and, yes, unrelenting. Leibovich provides a pithy assessment of the 2012 presidential campaign, but he admits to feeling depressed by the campaign due to the government’s inertia and the realization that the lack of civility between the political parties wouldn’t change, no matter which candidate won. He also laments living and raising a family in “the most disappointing city in America.”

Humorous, incisive and very droll.

DE NIRO A Life

Levy, Shawn Crown Archetype (608 pp.) $32.50 | Oct. 28, 2014 978-0-307-71678-1

The life and work of the legendary actor.

Film critic and best-selling biographer Levy (Paul Newman: A Life, 2009, etc.) turns his attentive eye to another silver screen icon: Robert De Niro (b. 1943). Though De Niro has been a persistent pop-culture presence since his film career started over 40 years ago, he is famously reticent with the press.

Paradoxically, De Niro, a man notorious for his intense and immersive performances, would often embarrassingly fumble through press interviews, hardly displaying the confidence and poise that he exudes on screen. Despite scant sources of candidness by De Niro, Levy expertly culls details for a vivid, complex portrait of the enigmatic actor, from his bohemian parents and upbringing amid the art scene of midcentury Manhattan to his rise alongside the auteur generation of new American filmmakers to his status as a revered idol. De Niro’s withholding of his kirkus.com

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personal life has created a mystique around him, an aura that Levy plays up by tracing De Niro’s lineage to an 11th-century Roman cavalryman, an audacious attempt to present his subject in a noble and rarefied air. It is, perhaps, the only misstep by Levy, but like any successful biographer, he captures not only the life of his subject, but the spirit of the times in which De Niro lived, simultaneously charting the success of collaborators and peers like Martin Scorsese. Levy is not simply star-struck; he objectively portrays the criticism of De Niro’s later career for choosing easy blockbuster fare. Perhaps the best symbols of De Niro’s dedication to his craft are the numerous anecdotes about his massive collection of stage props and set pieces. For De Niro, the success of a role was in his attention to detail, and he never relied on histrionics but rather a minimalist philosophy of revealing only a character’s essential emotions—much like he approached his own life.

An impressive biography that will surely stand as the definitive De Niro volume.

LET’S GO CRAZY Prince and the Making of Purple Rain

Light, Alan Atria (288 pp.) $26.00 | Dec. 9, 2014 978-1-4767-7672-9

Everything you ever wanted to know about the making of the popular Prince movie—and much more.

There are two justifications for this book. The first is the 30th anniversary of Purple Rain, the blockbuster movie and album that transformed Prince from a cult favorite into the supernova of popular culture. The second is the exhilaration of the ascent as experienced by a high school senior, later to be a well-respected music critic and editor. For Light (The Holy or the Broken: Leonard Cohen, Jeff Buckley, and the Unlikely Ascent of “Hallelujah,” 2012, etc.), then and now, Prince’s genius is a given, and the movie’s landmark status is beyond argument: “From all of Prince’s groundbreaking work, it is Purple Rain that endures first and foremost. It will always be the defining moment of a magnificent, fascinating—if often erratic—career. It carries the weight of history.” Lest this seem like hyperbole, the author quotes another critic who reviewed the movie at the time as “the best rock film ever made.” Since Prince doesn’t care much for anniversaries or looking back and has described the movie’s success as “my albatross,” Light didn’t bother asking him to reflect on that period. Instead, he relies on seemingly limitless access to his musical collaborators, the first-time director (who later became Prince’s manager), his publicists and his girlfriends.

Beyond the minutiae of moviemaking and who was sleeping with whom, the book is particularly incisive in providing context, showing how video technology and black crossover artists were changing the marketplace. A few of the revelations are real howlers—e.g., a studio suggestion that the untrained 100

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actor with a couple of hit singles wasn’t really big enough to carry the movie and that maybe he should be replaced by John Travolta. But mainly, Light commemorates an anniversary that might otherwise have passed without much notice.

A must-read for the Prince die-hards who have remained devoted through the musical meanderings of the last three decades.

WORD FOR WORD A Memoir

Lungina, Lilianna Adapted by Dorman, Oleg Translated by Gannon, Polly and Moore, Ast A. Overlook (336 pp.) $27.95 | Nov. 13, 2014 978-1-4683-0732-0 Memories of life behind the Iron Curtain.

In 1997, Lungina (1920-1998), a literary translator, spent a week with director Oleg Dorman, recounting her life for a 15-part documentary. Aired in Russia in 2009, the series was hugely popular, and the script, transcribed, translated and augmented with some additional material, has resulted in this disarmingly candid memoir. Born in Russia to Jewish parents, Lungina spent her childhood in Germany and France, returning to Moscow in 1934. The city in those days, she recalled, “was very poetic,” with milkmaids delivering milk and sledges carrying Muscovites through icy streets. Soon, though, she became aware of endemic political oppression: Friends’ fathers were arrested, some friends were expelled from her school, and when she protested the stupidity of that policy, she was expelled, too.

“I think this was the definitive moment in my disenchantment with the system, and my final rejection of it,” she said. Yet despite waging a reign of terror, Stalin was revered. Lungina explains her contemporaries’ psychology as “a kind of religious psychosis” caused partly by the strength of Stalin’s personality and partly by Russia’s cultural isolation. Art and literature needed to conform to socialist realism. After World War II, Lungina imagined that Russians who fought throughout Europe would return with a new desire for freedom, but Stalin quashed that desire. Calling people “cogs in a machine,” he enacted a stringent policy of surveillance and incited betrayal, denouncement and virulent anti-Semitism. Much of Lungina’s memoir focuses on the plight of the intelligentsia, which included herself (she translated, among many other writers, Astrid Lindgren, Heinrich Boll and August Strindberg); her husband, a playwright and director; and their friends, who included poet Joseph Brodsky and novelists Boris Pasternak and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. “Life taught me,” she said, “that intellectual courage is much harder to muster than physical courage.”

This frank and revelatory memoir portrays in rich detail Russia’s recent past and illuminates the consequences of its history for the turbulent present.

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“An intriguing look at a particularly influential life of letters and a treat for Mailer fans.” from selected letters of norman mailer

LETTER TO JIMMY

Mabanckou, Alain Soft Skull Press (224 pp.) $15.00 paper | Dec. 16, 2014 978-1-59376-601-6 A celebration of James Baldwin’s literature and legacy published in commemoration of the 20th anniversary of his death.

Written as an open letter to the late author and initially published in France in 2007, this book has been classified by the publisher as “literary memoir,” but it functions more as an elliptical biography. Like his literary idol, Mabanckou (French Literature/UCLA; Broken Glass, 2010, etc.) is an émigré to Paris and has spent plenty of time in the United States. But since he is an African, he brings a different perspective to themes of literary exile, race relations and the African diaspora than have Baldwin’s biographers (whom he cites liberally). He’s particularly incisive on the relationship between Baldwin and the stepfather who was much older than his mother, as Baldwin wrestled with issues of identity from childhood. His stepfather hated “white demons” and their culture with a virulence that the boy didn’t share and also instilled a harsh religiosity that his stepson would also reject. Yet James was himself “preaching from the age of fourteen,” and it was there that he became “aware of the power of the word,” with the biblical resonance that would inform so much of Baldwin’s work. Moving to France and openly acknowledging his homosexuality reinforced Baldwin’s sense of otherness, and he rebelled against such literary patriarchs as Richard Wright. “[I]dols are created in order to be destroyed,” he wrote of his rift with Wright. He also found himself at odds with the Black Power militants of the 1960s, with Eldridge Cleaver condemning him for “the most agonizing, complete hatred for Blacks.” Yet the novelist’s influence endures, and his imprint is even stronger in France, writes Mabanckou, who declares, “[i]f you return to this world, Jimmy, you will judge your homeland even more severely than you did when you were alive.”

The conceit of the letter and the oddly intimate tone toward “Jimmy” make this a curious work, but it’s often insightful and illuminating.

SELECTED LETTERS OF NORMAN MAILER

Mailer, Norman Lennon, J. Michael—Ed. Random House (860 pp.) $40.00 | Dec. 2, 2014 978-1-4000-6623-0

The late literary lion’s archivist shares 70 years of his missives.

Before he died at age 84, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Norman Mailer (1923-2007) penned 44 books. He also spent that time adapting plays, writing poetry, producing films, and helping to |

launch “New Journalism” and the Village Voice. In the course of all that activity, the Brooklyn boy–turned–Harvard man also wrote complex, caustic and sometimes-moving letters to some 4,000 individuals. Lennon (Norman Mailer: A Double Life, 2013) presents 716 of those letters, decade by decade, in their naked forms and without much introduction. The recipients represent a cavalcade of contrasting personalities ranging from Martin Luther King Jr. to Monica Lewinsky. Most are directed at Mailer’s family, friends and colleagues and find the World War II veteran supremely absorbed in his own ideas. Mailer aficionados will no doubt enjoy the behind-the-scenes looks at the making of seminal works like The Naked and the Dead, as well as the writer’s ongoing sparring matches with editors and critics. Back in 1958, fellow scribe William Styron received this warning: “So I tell you this, Bill-boy. You have got to learn to keep your mouth shut about my wife, for if you do not, and I hear of it again, I will invite you to a fight in which I expect to stomp out of you a fat amount of your yellow and treacherous shit.” The legendary man of letters seems downright tame here, possessed of a certain kind of blue-collar charm that compliments his penchant for intellectualization. But one must also then consider that Mailer later stabbed the same woman he so steadfastly defended. She survived, but the author would go on to fulfill the prediction he made early on in life about becoming a serial groom. Apparently, Mailer hated writing letters and often found the exercise tortuous, but from Lennon’s collection, it appears that he loathed being disconnected even more.

An intriguing look at a particularly influential life of letters and a treat for Mailer fans.

MARCO POLO The Journey that Changed the World Man, John Morrow/HarperCollins (400 pp.) $15.99 paper | Nov. 11, 2014 978-0-06-237507-0 978-0-06-237508-7 e-book

British historian Man (Samurai: A History, 2014, etc.) chronicles his journey to Asia where Marco Polo first led the Western traveler. The book was first published in the U.K. in 2009 as Xanadu.

Interest in Polo’s 13th-century travel account seemingly never wanes, as more knowledge is gained about the Mongol Empire in particular. The author has sifted through Polo’s fanciful tale—ghosted by his fellow inmate in the Genoa prison, romance author Rustichello da Pisa—separating fairy-tale self-aggrandizement from truth. Moreover, Man has trekked across China in pursuit of the site of Kublai Khan’s legendary “upper capital” and summer palace, Shangdu (“Xanadu” in English, thanks to Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s dreamy poem), where Polo would have stayed. Man even reconstructed the “Pleasure Dome,” virtually and in painstaking description. Marco’s 17-year stay at the court of the khan was preceded by a first visit

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by his father and uncle, and the khan greeted them rapturously, eager to learn about Europe and Christianity (he tolerated the Nestorians, as well as Buddhists and Daoists). Marco was 17 when he made the three-and-a-half-year trip back to Xanadu with his relatives, through eastern Turkey, Armenia, Iraq and into Persia, a route carefully plotted by Man (with useful maps). Polo’s observations are compelling, but his omissions are intriguing, and Man rushes to fill them with accounts of his own travels with a guide across the Asian steppes and desert. Polo’s admiration for Kublai Khan is remarkable. He was amazed by the beauty of the women and paper money, yet he did not mention foot binding or the Great Wall and lied about providing the engineering prowess for the catapult necessary to break the siege of Xiangyang in 1273.

Marvelous tales that first inspired the Western traveler to see and learn more.

WHEN BOOKS WENT TO WAR The Stories that Helped Us Win World War II Manning, Molly Guptill Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (288 pp.) $25.00 | Dec. 2, 2014 978-0-544-53502-2

How books raised spirits during World War II. In 1941, the American Army faced the challenge of training hastily convened troops and amassing basic supplies to wage an extensive war in Europe. Soon, the Army discovered another serious challenge: low morale. Far from home, cut off from family and friends, fearful and stressed, the new conscripts longed for distraction. “What the Army needed,” writes attorney Manning (The Myth of Ephraim Tutt: Arthur Train and His Great Literary Hoax, 2012) in this intriguing history, “was some form of recreation that was small, popular, and affordable. It needed books.”

Financial straits made buying books impossible, so librarians volunteered to mount a book drive. In the first two years, the Victory Book Campaign received 6.6 million volumes, not all appropriate for young men. Knitting books and children’s literature, for example, were sent elsewhere or pulped. Despite complaints that hardcover books were too large and heavy to carry, books proved so popular that the Army decided to take over, establishing the Council on Books in Wartime. Its first project was publishing 50,000 copies each of 50 titles in small, lightweight paperback editions. A staff of readers made recommendations, and the council noted any that might “give aid and comfort to the enemy, conflict with the spirit of American democracy, or be offensive to any religious or racial groups, trades, or professions.” Despite these guidelines, more than 1,200 selections were sent to soldiers and Navy men, including novels (A Tree Grows in Brooklyn was a great favorite), mysteries, Westerns, adventure stories, biographies, poetry and a host of other genres. Manning includes a book list as an appendix. Many soldiers were so moved by what they read that they 102

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started a correspondence with authors; for some soldiers, the books were their first introduction to literature of any kind and inspired their enrollment in higher education, supported by the GI Bill, after the war.

A fresh perspective on the trials of war and the power of books.

YOU HAVE TO FUCKING EAT

Mansbach, Adam Illus. by Brozman, Owen Akashic (32 pp.) $14.95 | Nov. 12, 2014 978-1-61775-378-7

Mansbach’s (Rage Is Back, 2013, etc.) second children’s book satire/foulmouthed balm for exhausted parents spotlights the agony of managing toddlers at mealtime.

Go the Fuck to Sleep, the 2011 surprise hit by the otherwise serious novelist, was a canny blend of Dr. Seuss’ patter and Irvine Welsh’s profanity, all the funnier for the oddness of its sweet-and-sour combination. The book became an international best-seller, and Mansbach is careful not to mess with success for the sequel. A new illustrator, Brozman, is on board, but the overall strategy remains the same: There’s a problem (picky eaters) introduced in a lilting pastoral lullaby (“The bunnies are munching on carrots...”) that is then undone at the end of each quatrain with some angry-dad sputtering (“The fucking meal’s served. Time to eat”). Every parent of a toddler endures a series of crises daily (cleaning up toys, going potty, picking out clothes), and this series is bound to be tediously repetitive should it continue. But Mansbach and Brozman do just enough here to entertainingly tweak the formula, particularly in terms of its art. Unlike Ricardo Cortes’ gentle, painterly illustrations for Sleep, Brozman’s are more overtly cartoonish and absurd, like a cheetah stoically tolerating a boy’s tableside slovenliness and a panda parent glumly pushing a shopping cart through a bamboo forest. Mansbach voices genuine frustration in a way that would be irresponsible in kid lit and unprofessional in parenting guides—it’s a joke that, like most good jokes, has a serious point behind it. The lines are sometimes rhythmically clumsy: “You’re not finished, and no, you can’t go to school / In pajamas, a hat, and bare feet.” A world of weary moms and dads deserves better scansion, but then nobody’s here for the poetry.

A likable variation on a universal fucking theme.

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“Who knew bowling alleys could tell such entertaining stories?” from pin action

PIN ACTION Small-Time Gangsters, High-Stakes Gambling, and the Teenage Hustler Who Became a Bowling Champion

Manzione, Gianmarc Pegasus (336 pp.) $27.95 | Nov. 4, 2014 978-1-60598-645-6

A hard-boiled and often funny look at the hustlers, thugs and characters of the 1960s New York bowling underworld.

Before bowling alleys were sanitized into lanes and became family fun centers, they were as colorfully unsavory as any pool hall, race track or smoke-filled poker room, generating thousands of dollars per night in bets, weapons at the ready for those reluctant to pay. Manzione plainly misses those days of “action bowling” (gambling action), which have “faded into an obscure labyrinth of characters and stories.” Characters and stories, as well as beatings and corpses, abound in this book, which mainly serves as a biography of Ernie Schlegel, action-bowling master— (and delinquent)–turned–flamboyant Professional Bowlers Association mainstay, reinventing himself as “The Bicentennial Kid,” an elaborately costumed cross between a comic-book hero and Muhammad Ali. It took Schlegel decades to overcome his demons and rise to the top of his profession, but bowling kept him out of prison. Much of the book features side stories and anecdotes about guys with nicknames like “Joe the Kangaroo, who took a three-step approach and then hopped around the approach on one leg after each shot.” Or the guy who bet he could drink a fifth of Scotch straight down, did, pocketed his $50 and dropped dead on his walk home. Or “the adrenaline-hungry kids with dollar signs for pupils.” The author’s romanticizing sometimes pushes the narrative toward purple prose—“By 1980, Schlegel was still waiting for the elevator in the lobby of his dreams”—and his stories can occasionally sound like tall tales.

But he loves the sport, the era and the characters and makes good on the promise that “if it is even remotely as much fun for you to read about as it was for me to write about, then the journey will have been well worth the trip for both of us.”

Who knew bowling alleys could tell such entertaining stories?

BAGHDAD City of Peace, City of Blood—A History in Thirteen Centuries

Marozzi, Justin Da Capo/Perseus (536 pp.) $32.00 | Nov. 4, 2014 978-0-306-82398-5

Pertinent, patient study of the tumultuous history of this strategic city since its founding in 762. |

British foreign correspondent Marozzi (The Way of Herodotus: Travels with the Man Who Invented History, 2008, etc.) has experience living in the “slaughterhouse” that Baghdad has become since the mid-2000s. In fact, sectarian violence has plagued the city since its creation as the new capital by the victorious Abbasid caliph al-Mansur. Eclipsing the Sunni Islam capital at Damascus and sending the Umayyad dynasty into exile, the new Shia-based Abbasid leaders chose the ancient Mesopotamian site between the Tigris and Euphrates for its central location and fertile land. The city’s name might be from Persian, meaning “founded by God,” yet Mansur preferred the name Dar as Salam, or “house of peace,” which would prove heavily ironic even for the murderous Mansur, who had a storehouse of corpses of his enemies. Originally constructed as a walled, round city, it soon expanded across the Tigris. Following Mansur’s death in 775, Baghdad would endure nearly 40 Abbasid caliphs, many enjoying splendid building projects and cultural efflorescence—e.g., the prosperous reign of Harun al-Rashid, immortalized in A Thousand and One Nights. The Mongol raids descended on the city from the mid-1200s onward, followed

by Persia in 1508 and the Ottomans in 1528, who would remain until 1917. Yet despite the turbulence and frequent destruction, Baghdad remained a “bustling emporium,” with a thriving Jewish population as well. Marozzi has sifted through the numerous tales of travelers throughout the centuries, and he also makes use of the rich British accounts, which saw the city’s opening to outsiders by the mid-1800s. Indeed, the British introduced a succession of colorful characters—e.g., Sir Stanley Maude, who wrested the city from the Turks, and Gertrude Bell, champion of modern Iraq and preserver of its antiquities.

A useful, relevant history of a “relentlessly tempestuous” city.

MY HEART IS A DRUNKEN COMPASS A Memoir Martinez, Domingo Globe Pequot (320 pp.) $26.95 | Nov. 18, 2014 978-1-4930-0140-8

A best-selling memoirist tells the story of how he survived—and came to terms with—the traumatic near-deaths of his youngest brother and former fiancee.

Martinez’s (The Boy Kings of Texas, 2012) youngest brother, Derek, was born to parents whose marriage was “crippled by rot.”

Spoiled with attention as a child, Derek hero-worshipped his hardliving, hard-drinking older brother. But he also suffered deeply when his parents divorced and the mother he adored shunted him off to live with one relative after another. So when Martinez, who went to live in Seattle, learned that his brother was in a coma as a result of an alcohol-related blackout and fall, he felt profound guilt. His misery was compounded by the fact he chose not to return to Texas due to a feud with another brother. But Martinez could not escape his own conscience and found himself “collecting

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little brothers” in his neighborhood. Then he met Stephanie, a troubled bisexual woman whose “anguish...brokenness...and misfit qualit[ies]” mirrored his own. The pair hurried into a dysfunctional engagement. At the same time, Martinez befriended an older woman named Sarah, with whom he fell deeply in love. The author eventually broke off his relationship with Stephanie, but not long afterward, she drove her car off a cliff. Like Derek, she suffered brain injury, went into a coma and survived; unlike him, she had the shocked and bewildered Martinez by her side until she recovered. At Sarah’s insistence, Martinez began to write because “it was going to be [his] only way out” and the way he could finally align the “drunken compass” of his broken heart. This tragicomic memoir is not just about the complications of family, but also about the power of narrative to heal and make whole.

A passionate, occasionally convoluted account of personal redemption.

MAN ALIVE A True Story of Violence, Forgiveness and Becoming a Man McBee, Thomas Page City Lights (128 pp.) $13.95 paper | Nov. 1, 2014 978-0-87286-624-9 978-0-87286-651-5 e-book

The transgender author delivers a unique, powerful rite-of-passage memoir.

Plenty of writers have written about the experience of making the transition from one gender to another, but most haven’t also dealt with child molestation, paternity issues and a mugging by a man who would soon commit murder—not to mention a partner who has mixed feelings about the author’s becoming a man. Resisting the inclination to sensationalize (or sentimentalize), McBee interweaves the various strands of the narrative, exercising plenty of restraint. The first section alternates between the author as a 10-year-old girl wrestling with sending a man to prison and the mugging almost two decades later, when the author (who, still female, could pass for a man) is attacked with her partner by a stranger who would soon make headlines for another crime. In each case, there’s a theme of forgiveness, a quality of mercy that does not seem strained. “The world seemed to me a place of beautiful, damaged things and I wanted to love them all,” explains the author early on. Whether his father—or the mugger, for that matter—affected his attitude toward men in general and his decision, with deep ambivalence, to live a life after 30 as a transgender man isn’t subject to pat psychology here.

Instead, the author writes in matter-of-fact detail about the tension and love shared with a fiancee and about self-discovery pilgrimages to explore bloodlines and paternity.

“The world is vicious and beautiful and, to some extent, unexplainable,” writes the author. “But that doesn’t stop us from wanting a story.” This is quite a story, masterfully rendered.

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THIRTEEN SOLDIERS A Personal History of Americans at War McCain, John; Mark Salter Simon & Schuster (384 pp.) $28.00 | Nov. 11, 2014 978-1-4767-5965-4

A patriotic though unsentimental look at the major wars fought by the United States as told through the difficult experiences of ordinary soldiers.

Arizona Sen. McCain and his longtime staffer and coauthor Salter (Hard Call: Great Decisions and the Extraordinary People Who Made Them, 2007, etc.) again sound the themes of courage and honor represented by the regular Americans of all branches of the military who fought for their country from the Revolutionary War to the Iraq War, circa 2006.

From the first soldier, Joseph Plumb Martin, who enlisted in Gen. George Washington’s army at age 15 and served the duration of the War of Independence, the authors emphasize the deprivations and confusion of war over the hollow declarations of “glorious triumph over adversity.” McCain and Salter use Martin’s own late-life memoir to pepper the details of military life—e.g., being commanded at one point by the Marquis de Lafayette and suffering the cold and hunger of the winter of 1779 at Morristown, which prompted Martin’s regiment to mutiny in May 1780. George Roberts, an African-American seaman, represented one of the 15 to 20 percent of black sailors in the U.S. Navy during the War of 1812, serving with distinction but under segregated conditions and restricted liberty. Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., son of the famous Boston professor and essayist, was an idealistic Harvard student who fought bravely with his Massachusetts regiment for the Union and was profoundly changed by the bloodshed of the Civil War. Other notable soldiers include Maj. Gen. Littleton “Tony” Waller, who refused to fulfill an order to slaughter the Philippine natives during a battle of the Spanish-American War in Manila in 1898 and was courtmartialed; and Guy Gabaldon, who, while battling on the Pacific island of Saipan during World War II, convinced many Japanese to surrender rather than commit suicide.

Deeply personal stories that track real soldiers through conditions of trying morale.

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YOU CAN’T MAKE THIS UP Miracles, Memories, and the Perfect Marriage of Sports and Television Michaels, Al with Wertheim, L. Jon Morrow/HarperCollins (352 pp.) $28.99 | Nov. 18, 2014 978-0-06-231496-3

A veteran sportscaster revisits his career.

Michaels (b. 1944) begins with—and alludes to in other places—his good fortune in his life and career.

He writes about his boyhood in Brooklyn (yes, he loved Ebbets Field), the family’s move to Southern California and his great admiration for the Dodgers’ announcer Vin Scully. Throughout, the author mentions “the Rascal” that’s in him, a Puckish sort of personality that occasionally escapes its minimum-security facility for some prankish fun. Michaels’ father had one sort of connection to the celebrity world, and the author got an early audition (at 19) with sportscaster Curt Gowdy, who was encouraging and gave him some important advice: “Don’t ever get jaded.” After an early break that nearly broke him (working with uncooperative Chick Hearn), Michaels—who’d early on resolved to be an announcer—began his rise through the ranks, including a big break, announcing games for the Cincinnati Reds during some of their Big Red Machine years. He proved himself there, and before long, he was in the booth for some of the most memorable contests of our era. He writes in detail about the 1980 Olympic hockey game between the United States and the Soviets (and how he ad-libbed his classic line, “Do you believe in miracles?”). He also writes frankly about his friendship with OJ and Nicole Brown Simpson. He was slow to accept OJ’s guilt and visited him several times in prison. The author does not really eviscerate anyone here (he has kind words for almost everyone), but he does declare that by the end of Howard Cosell’s career, the tell-it-like-it-is guy had become “the world’s biggest pain in the ass.” He also takes a few jabs at producers Chet Forte and Mark Shapiro, but for the most part, the author is genial rather than vengeful.

A playful puppy of a memoir about a big dog career.

THE JEW WHO DEFEATED HITLER Henry Morgenthau Jr., FDR, and How We Won the War

Moreira, Peter Prometheus Books (350 pp.) $25.00 | $11.99 e-book | Nov. 4, 2014 978-1-61614-958-1 978-1-61614-959-8 e-book

How Henry Morgenthau Jr. (1891-1967) “led the Treasury to finance the dismantling of the Nazi juggernaut, and how his final gambit led to his inglorious political downfall.” |

Moreira’s (Hemingway on the China Front: His WWII Spy Mission with Martha Gellhorn, 2006, etc.) text, scant on biography and based largely on the voluminous Morgenthau records from the FDR Library, is a case study of wartime governance.

His reporting on the bureaucratic business aspect of the mobilization takes the tone of bookkeeping, replete with accounts of budgets, allocations, inventories and production schedules.

The war was waged, after all, with superior American economic weaponry, and that superiority was Morgenthau’s forte. Not especially articulate or learned, he excelled beyond his perceived abilities as the nation’s CFO. He maintained an ardent personal friendship with Franklin Roosevelt, but despite his devotion, he was not always the president’s yes man. Morgenthau frequently expanded his secretarial job description, dealing with allies, deliberating with fellow Cabinet members and managing the procurement of the tools of war. He implemented the Lend Lease program, which sent destroyers to Britain, supplied friendly nations with cash and facilitated the transition to payas-you-go income taxes. Under his management, vast sums of war bonds were sold at modest interest rates. The most prominent Jew in the administration, he battled bitterly with a State Department that, reluctant to save Jews from Hitler’s wrath, was even actively obstructing rescue efforts. Morgenthau was a proud man, and the politicking was tiring and ongoing. Sometimes he cleared up the inevitable complexities; sometimes he added to them. His ill-conceived eponymous plan to completely deindustrialize postwar Germany failed utterly, and in his later years, he became largely forgotten as a public servant.

In a book that will appeal to policy wonks and historians of the era, Moreira reminds us of the work of the principal financial planner of World War II.

FIGHTING BACK THE RIGHT Reclaiming America from the Attack on Reason Niose, David Palgrave Macmillan (256 pp.) $27.00 | Nov. 16, 2014 978-1-137-27924-8

A well-intended effort to be reasonable with the enemies of reason.

It’s all in the definition of terms: The right is, in the main, made up of the forces of the anti-Enlightenment, who repudiate secularism and egalitarianism and are heavily invested in religion. Worse, by humanist attorney Niose’s (Nonbeliever Nation: The Rise of Secular Americans, 2012) account, the argument has shifted. On that religious front, he writes, “even liberals have come to expect, and too often accept, an atmosphere of visible public piety, even though it is historically invalid and unquestionably obstructs egalitarian policy.” The liberal surrender that has made this possible has other aspects, including the loss of the language and branding war—though that situation is getting better with the abandonment of terms such as “gay rights” in favor of the more broadly accepted “marriage equality.” In Niose’s view,

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“Proof positive that evolutionary theory can be popular and inviting.” from undeniable

underlying the anti-science, anti-education, anti-intellectual tea party strain of the right is barely disguised corporatism, and his remedies involve taming “the corporate beasts.” He aims to effect that taming by means of a constitutional amendment that deprives corporations of legal personhood while embarking on a vigorous program of campaign finance reform. Easier said that done, of course, especially when coupled with Niose’s hope that somehow the public discourse can be made smarter (“We need to encourage—or better yet, demand—rational, factbased policy discussion and lambaste politicians who proudly reject science”) and that public secularism can be restored in the place of creeping theocracy. Niose’s brush is sometimes broad, trending into the merely rhetorical: “[T]he incorporation of patriotism and militarism into ordinary American life has been executed with seamless precision by the governmentcorporate establishment, aided by a population that has found much comfort and security in the notion of military strength.”

Readers will judge how realistic the program is, but despite the verbal flourishes, many will feel that the time is right for it.

A smart diagnosis, if accompanied by too much wishful thinking.

UNDENIABLE Evolution and the Science of Creation

Nye, Bill St. Martin’s (320 pp.) $25.99 | Nov. 4, 2014 978-1-250-00713-1

A sweeping tour of the mechanics of evolution from the Science Guy. “Science is the way we know nature and our place within it,” writes Nye, who is open-minded and curious but also someone who likes the best explanations devised by the human project: “In science, a hypothesis should not only explain the evidence we have found,” he writes, “it should also make predictions about things not yet discovered....Science is inherently work in progress.”

What kind of evidence do we have about evolution; what kind of dynamic thinking, informed by all we have experienced, can we bring to its understanding? What method of inquiry allows us to advance our understanding? Nye neatly deconstructs the arguments against evolution, from basic mistakes of biology and physics to more cosmological concerns—that the naysayers “avoid the exploration of evolution because it reminds us all that humankind may not be that special in nature’s scheme. What happens to other species also happens to us”—and he takes very seriously the problems posed by introducing creationism to school curriculums around the country. While he has no trouble sinking his teeth into the creationists and anti-evolution activists, Nye really takes flight when he is trying to puzzle out how we get here from there or considering the strangeness of sexual selection (“Consider the peacock, the epitome of costly signaling”). In addition to Darwin, the author examines the contributions of a host of scientists from a variety of disciplines, 106

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including biology, geology and genetics. With the smoothness and encouragement that mark his writing, Nye suggests that “[t]he only way to get the answers is to keep looking at living things and learning more about the process by which we all came to be.”

Proof positive that evolutionary theory can be popular and inviting.

AMERICAN QUEEN The Rise and Fall of Kate Chase Sprague—Civil War “Belle of the North” and Gilded Age Woman of Scandal Oller, John Da Capo/Perseus (416 pp.) $25.99 | Nov. 15, 2014 978-0-306-82280-3

Biography of the 19th-century socialite who made her way to or near “the center of more major events...than any woman and most men of her time.”

Born at a time in American history when females could neither vote nor hold office, Kate Chase Sprague (1840-1899) came to wield more political influence than any American woman ever had before. Her father and first political teacher was Salmon Chase. After he won the governorship of Ohio in 1855, Chase made his beautiful and accomplished daughter into his hostess and political confidante. When he accepted Lincoln’s appointment as treasury secretary on the eve of the Civil War in March 1861, Kate immediately established a social “court” in Washington that outshone that of Lincoln’s far-less-glamorous wife, Mary. Both father and daughter became known for the brilliance of their gatherings as well as the ruthlessness of their communal desire to eventually occupy the White House. In an effort to secure the money they needed to fund their political dream, Kate married the wealthy but erratic Rhode Island businessman–turned-politician William Sprague. While her staunchly anti-slavery father eventually broke with the Republican Party he helped found and made an unsuccessful run for the presidency as a Democrat, Kate’s marriage to Sprague foundered. She became the mistress of the charismatic, and married, New York state senator and Republican Party boss Roscoe Conkling. Their scandalous affair shared the headlines with other major events of the day, including the assassination of President James Garfield in 1881. Divorce the following year “dethroned” Kate from her unofficial status as American political “Queen” and made her a social outcast who would die in poverty at the age of 58. Oller’s work is less the story of a woman’s political rise and fall and more one that reveals how the social limitations of the past created tragic outcomes for talented females.

A well-researched, thoughtful biography of a woman who “became entirely her own person, a rare feat for women of her day.” (16 pages of b/w photos)

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THINGS TO MAKE AND DO IN THE FOURTH DIMENSION A Mathematician’s Journey Through Narcissistic Numbers, Optimal Dating Algorithms, at Least Two Kinds of Infinity, and More

ARTISTS UNDER HITLER Collaboration and Survival in Nazi Germany

Petropoulos, Jonathan Yale Univ. (424 pp.) $40.00 | Nov. 25, 2014 978-0-300-19747-1

Parker, Matt Farrar, Straus and Giroux (320 pp.) $27.00 | Nov. 11, 2014 978-0-374-27565-5

Guardian and Telegraph writer and comedian Parker aims “to show people all the fun bits of mathematics.”

For starters, take out paper and pencil, compass, straight edge, maybe a balloon or a bag of oranges, because the author will challenge you to tackle puzzles, whether it’s cutting a pizza in equal slices so some pieces never touch the center or passing a quarter through a nickel-size hole. Parker begins with the easier elements like number systems, primes and the polygons of Euclidean geometry. But his approach has the acceleration of a Ferrari, so readers are quickly racing into higher dimensional space. Parker explains how a square becomes a cube in 3-D and a hypercube (a tesseract) in four dimensions or a doughnut (a torus) becomes an object called a Klein bottle. This branch of math is topology, but in arriving there, Parker makes forays into subfields like tiling (think bathroom floors), packing (how to ship oranges efficiently) and knot theory. Some readers will lose their way—the visualizations alone are tough. Also, by this point, it’s clear that the author does not aspire to create a math-for-dummies handbook. Instead, he provides one man’s take on the history of math, emphasizing the puzzles that led to profound discoveries or to tantalizing conjectures that remain neither proved nor disproved. But this one man is also a dedicated denizen of the digital universe, and some of the best parts of the book are Parker’s explanations of how computers work.

This includes the feat in which he and math colleagues set up a field of thousands of dominoes to demonstrate how a computer adds two binary numbers. Parker goes on to explain how smartphones digitally code a photo and why a text sent across the globe arrives error-free despite all the relays along the way.

Parker should be commended. He may not convert all readers to loving math, but he does provide a glimmer of understanding of how it works.

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Petropoulos (History/Claremont McKenna Coll.; Royals and the Reich: The Princes von Hessen in Nazi Germany, 2006, etc.) questions the prevalent assumption that Nazis denigrated modernism and quashed evidence of avant-garde movements in the arts.

Examining the careers of selected visual artists, composers, architects, a poet, an actor and, of course, filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, the author argues that the cultural milieu of Nazi Germany was complex and often contradictory. Although publicly deriding modernism as degenerate, many high-ranking Nazis collected modernist works, bought from French dealers or plundered from confiscated collections. Austrian art historian Kajetan Mulhmann, “arguably the most prolific art plunderer in history,” mounted many modernist exhibitions. Focusing on modernists themselves, Petropoulos questions their motives in seeking accommodation with the Nazi regime. He concludes that some, despite their artistic proclivities, were Nazi sympathizers; some misunderstood or underestimated Nazi goals; others were so egotistical that “they thought their work to be indispensable to their field”; some were simply opportunists; and some believed “that the intellectual goals of modernism and fascism were compatible.” Petropoulos cites five modernists whose efforts at accommodation failed: Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius and composer Paul Hindemith, who left Germany during the war, expressionist poet Gottfried Benn, sculptor Ernst Barlach and visual artist Emil Nolde, who remained but whose careers were compromised. Among the five, Nolde was a Nazi sympathizer and anti-Semite; but Barlach, who “identified with the downtrodden and marginalized,” was not.

Modernists who flourished were composer Richard Strauss, actor Gustaf Grundgens, sculptor Arno Breker, architect Albert Speer, and Riefenstahl, who tried mightily to revise or conceal her past after the war. She claimed that she had been “a sworn enemy of Goebbels,” committed only to her art and apolitical.

These 10 artists, Petropoulos claims, were exemplary of many other modernists.

A persuasive, nuanced and surprising picture of German culture under the Nazis.

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“Everything you know about Russia is wrong, according to this eye-opening, mind-bending memoir of a TV producer caught between two cultures.” from nothing is true and everything is possible

THE IMMORTAL EVENING A Legendary Dinner with Keats, Wordsworth, and Lamb Plumly, Stanley Norton (336 pp.) $26.95 | Oct. 20, 2014 978-0-393-08099-5

A re-creation of a famous 1817 dinner party hosted by painter Benjamin Haydon for his friends John Keats, William Wordsworth and Charles Lamb serves as a way of exploring the lives, artistic sentiments and worldviews of some of the most influential literary figures of England’s Romantic period.

When Haydon invited his friends to dinner and tea on Dec. 28th, 1817—a night he would later refer to in his autobiography and diary entries as “the immortal dinner”—he did so for two reasons. The first was to introduce the young emerging poet Keats to Wordsworth, already considered a great Romantic poet. The second was to share his progress on his most important historical painting to that point, Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem.

A massive work that incorporated the faces of Keats, Wordsworth and Lamb, Haydon had spent three years on the painting by 1817 and would spend another three on it before it was completed. Although poet Plumly (Posthumous Keats: A Personal Biography, 2009) does not spend significant time describing the “lively, even raucous evening” itself, he uses it as a way to ambitiously chronicle the events before and after the meal in each of the artist’s lives. The author also adopts a speculative tone when discussing the meal—e.g., after delving into their work to compare their differing views on poetry form: “You have to wonder if any of these issues were discussed or brought up at the immortal dinner.” In this exhaustively researched but occasionally digressive book, Plumly uses diary entries, autobiographies, historical accounts and excerpts of the artists’ works to explore a key time period in artistic and literary history.

Eloquent at times and rambling at others, this colorful historical narrative will be of interest to academics of the Romantic era, but the disorienting chronology and critical jargon may deter some general readers.

YES PLEASE

Poehler, Amy Dey Street/HarperCollins (352 pp.) $28.99 | Oct. 28, 2014 978-0-06-226834-1

The star of Parks and Recreation shares stories from her adolescence, her star-making tenure at Saturday Night Live and her abiding love of improvisation.

In her debut book, comedian Poehler credits her approach to work to Carol Burnett, who was “funny and versatile and up for anything” and “a benevolent captain” on her eponymous variety show.

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The author’s successful career proves that collaboration, good manners and gratitude are assets in both business and life. She has written a happy, angst-free memoir with stories told without regret or shame; rather, Poehler provides a series of lessons learned about achieving success through ambition and a resolute spirit. She affectionately recounts her perfect-seeming childhood and adolescence, including making lifelong friends, waiting tables, and living and working in the rough, pre-gentrified Greenwich Village. Poehler is especially grateful to her proud, comical parents and shares their wisdom with readers: “Make sure he’s grateful to be with you,” “Ask for what you want” and “Always overtip.” With benevolent humor, she shares “Obligatory Drug Stories, or Lessons I Learned on Mushrooms” (“I’ve tried most drugs but avoided the BIG BAD ONES”) and explores why ambivalence is an important component of success in a chapter titled “Treat Your Career Like a Bad Boyfriend.”

Along with Meredith Walker and Amy Miles, Poehler has created a Web series, “Smart Girls at the Party,” to empower and celebrate women and girls who “chang[e] the world by being themselves.” The author conveys the ethos of this project in pithy statements and reassurances sprinkled throughout the book in large type—e.g., “If It’s Not Funny, You Don’t Have To Laugh” and “Everybody Is Scared Most Of The Time.” This is not a treacly self-help book or spiritual guide but rather motivation from a hilarious and kindhearted champion.

A wise and winning—and polite—memoir and manifesto. (First printing of 500,000)

NOTHING IS TRUE AND EVERYTHING IS POSSIBLE The Surreal Heart of the New Russia Pomerantsev, Peter PublicAffairs (256 pp.) $25.99 | Nov. 11, 2014 978-1-61039-455-0

Everything you know about Russia is wrong, according to this eye-opening, mind-bending memoir of a TV producer caught between two cultures.

Born in Russia but raised in Europe, where he is now a London-based writer, Pomerantsev felt compelled to return to his homeland after the turn of the century: “I wanted to get closer: London seemed so measured, so predictable, the America the rest of my émigré family lived in seemed so content, while the real Russia seemed truly alive, had the sense that anything was possible.” He got more than he bargained for, an experience far different from anything he had anticipated, though he did return from Russia with a wife and daughter (barely mentioned until the end, where he also acknowledges that he has “scrunched time mercilessly to tell my story”). Instead of a cohesive overview or chronological progression, the author records his impressions more like a kaleidoscopic series of anecdotes and vignettes, absurd and tragic, with characters that might

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be tough to believe if they were presented as fiction. There are the legions of strikingly beautiful women who blur the distinction between gold digger and prostitute. There are the Night Wolves, a motorcycle gang that is “the Russian equivalent of the Hells Angels” but who “are bikers who have found a Russian God.” There is corruption at every level, from officials who prefer bribes to taxes to a criminal system in which “99% of those charged in Russia receive guilty verdicts.” There is also reality TV, which demands heroes and happy endings, even when the subject is a ravishing model who was either murdered or committed suicide after indoctrination by a brainwashing cult, which the author suggests are as inherently Russian as vodka.

And there is “the great war between Holy Russia and the Godless West” in a Russia that both emulates and reviles the crass excesses of capitalism.

Not always cohesive, but the stylish rendering of the Russian culture, which both attracts and appalls the author, will keep the reader captivated.

TOLSTOY’S FALSE DISCIPLE The Untold Story of Leo Tolstoy and Vladimir Chertkov Popoff, Alexandra Pegasus (400 pp.) $28.95 | Nov. 15, 2014 978-1-60598-640-1

A Canadian biographer examines Leo Tolstoy’s enigmatic love/friendship, which was steeped in shared Christian values.

With access to heretofore unavailable archival material suppressed during the Soviet era due to its problematic Christian and homoerotic elements, Popoff (The Wives: The Women Behind Russia’s Literary Giants, 2012, etc.) unearths details of Tolstoy’s relationship with a handsome, younger, manipulative Russian aristocratic, Vladimir Chertkov (1854-1936), who seems to have had a huge influence over the novelist’s final writings.

When Tolstoy first met Chertkov, a former officer in the czar’s Horse Guards who became an evangelical Christian during the so-called Petersburg revival of the 1870s, the great novelist, in his mid-50s, had undergone his own conversion and renounced his previous literary work in favor of dogmatic religious texts based on the teachings of Jesus. At 29, Chertkov, whose forebears moved in exalted aristocratic circles and whose father may have been Alexander II, ingratiated himself with Tolstoy through his heartfelt confessions of faith and sin and their like-minded views of Christian faith and nonviolence. Their mutual confessions of “shameful thoughts” and sharing of diary entries (often destroyed) cemented a secretive bond between them, allowing Tolstoy to vent his frustrations about his wife, Sophia, and family. At first, Sophia was taken by the charming aristocrat, though Tolstoy’s decision in 1885 to renounce copyright of his works from then on when he and Chertkov began their evangelical press hurt Sophia’s income from Tolstoy’s earlier collected works. Moreover, notes Popoff, Chertkov steered |

the direction of the master’s numerous stories and even pressed him to change endings. In the end, Popoff finds only a nefarious influence in Chertkov, although Tolstoy dearly loved him, leading eventually to Tolstoy’s disastrous abandonment of his family and his death.

A work of dogged research helps elucidate Tolstoy’s late-life conversion.

THE PHANTOM KILLER Unlocking the Mystery of the Texarkana Serial Murders: The Story of a Town in Terror Presley, James Pegasus (400 pp.) $26.95 | Nov. 15, 2014 978-1-60598-642-5

An examination of the spasm of violence popularly dubbed the “Texarkana moonlight murders.”

Texas historian Presley (A Saga of Wealth: The Rise of the Texas Oilmen, 1978) doesn’t much like that name, since the eight murders of late winter and spring 1946 took place in different moon phases—but always deep in the night. As the author notes, Texarkana, split between two states, was a town where crime was constant and violence frequent; still, serial murder was quite another thing. Presley writes portentously of the windup to this savage, strange episode: “The snow melted. The weather grew cooperative. Fears of a roving mad dog evaporated. The war was over. What could happen next?” What could happen did happen: A sociopath scared the town into near-paralysis, drawing the attention of law enforcement officials and the press nationwide. Presley’s narrative takes us through the cat-and-mouse chase that served up dozens of suspects before narrowing in on several likely cases, and he concludes that justice was eventually served, if it wasn’t quite as neat and evidentially definitive as in these days of forensic analysis and DNA testing. Much of the narrative is given over to showing where the investigation was right—surprisingly often, given the paucity of clues and evidence—and where it was wrong, as well as to looking at the key players. The asides into criminal psychology, however, are too plentiful—e.g., “The offender failed to develop a conscience at the critical age and never will”; “He probably didn’t think of it in the way normal persons would have, insuring tragedy for everyone, himself included.” The inexpert prose diminishes the compelling interest of the story itself, though anything with Texas Rangers in it is likely to hold the attention of readers.

A thoroughgoing but occasionally plodding story that awaits a better writer. For now, though, this is the best available account of a crime that, though a cold case, still has people talking.

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“A convincing argument that becoming resilient is not only possible, but essential; food for thought for all and especially recommended for community leaders.” from the resilience dividend

OUR DAILY POISON From Pesticides to Packaging, How Chemicals Have Contaminated the Food Chain and Are Making Us Sick

Robin, Marie-Monique Translated by Schein, Allison and Vergnaud, Lara New Press (480 pp.) $28.95 | Dec. 9, 2014 978-1-59558-909-5

A thorough examination of industrial chemicals in our food chain by an acclaimed French journalist and documentary filmmaker.

In this companion book to her documentary of the same name, Robin (The World According to Monsanto, 2010) argues that the destructive effects of poorly studied and regulated industrial chemicals have been greater than their benefits. She is clear about her bias from the beginning: Growing up in a farm family, she is personally outraged by what she argues are the preventable diseases, deformities and deaths brought about by the chemical industry’s prioritization of profit over public health.

However, she plunges deep into the scientific, historical and political details of these issues, and readers who want to argue with her conclusions have their work cut out for them. Robin builds her arguments methodically and reinforces them with exhaustive evidence that she gathered during two years of international research, including personal interviews, historical and archival documents, and rigorous medical studies. A few of the topics discussed include the origins of the chemical industry in chemical warfare; its history of “strategizing how to control and manipulate research on the toxicity of its products, while waging a merciless war on all the scientists wishing to maintain their independence in the name of the defense of public health”; the modern epidemic of cancers and other diseases that exploded at the end of the 19th century; the weaknesses of epidemiological studies; the idea of acceptable daily intake; case studies of specific chemicals; and the “cocktail effect.” There are several painful stories of poisoning victims’ struggles for recognition and compensation, which serve to break up and humanize the flood of technical information. In her conclusion, Robin calls for a new precautionary approach to approving chemicals that errs on the side of protecting people rather than industry.

For readers with a strong interest in environmental and public health and food safety policy, this may be one of the most important books of the year.

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THE RESILIENCE DIVIDEND Being Strong in a World Where Things Go Wrong

Rodin, Judith PublicAffairs (352 pp.) $27.99 | Nov. 11, 2014 978-1-61039-470-3

A revealing examination of the anatomy of resilience, the capacity to withstand and emerge stronger from acute shocks and chronic stresses.

Rodin, the president of the Rockefeller Foundation, which launched the 100 Resilient Cities project in 2013, explains why resilience matters and analyzes its components: awareness of assets, liabilities and vulnerabilities; diversity of sources of capacity; integration of functions and actions; the ability to self-regulate; and the capacity to adapt to changing circumstances. Firmly convinced that resilience can be learned, Rodin demonstrates how to build it and how it works through an array of stories from around the world. She shows how the disruptive factors of climate change, urbanization and globalization intertwine and how resilience can withstand these threats.

Her stories explore the three phases of resilience—readiness, responsiveness and revitalization—and describe the resilience dividend, the ability to build new relationships, seize new opportunities and take on new endeavors. Many of her examples involve natural disasters: the earthquake and fire in San Francisco in 1906, the tsunami at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan, and hurricanes Katrina in New Orleans and Sandy in New York. Rodin also looks at the Boston Marathon bombing, as well as crime and poverty in Medellin, Colombia. That story shows how Medellin, once considered the murder capital of the world and now on the Rockefeller list of 100 Resilient Cities, is successfully addressing its problems and moving forward. The author focuses not just on the thinking and actions of various government agencies, but on the efforts of communities, civic groups, businesses, individuals, clubs and other organizations and the tools and technologies that were employed. She clearly shows what went right and what went wrong and what can be learned from past experiences.

A convincing argument that becoming resilient is not only possible, but essential; food for thought for all and especially recommended for community leaders.

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SEIZING FREEDOM Slave Emancipation and Liberty for All

OVERRULED The Long War for Control of the U.S. Supreme Court

Roediger, David R. Verso (256 pp.) $26.95 | Nov. 4, 2014 978-1-78168-609-6

Root, Damon Palgrave Macmillan (288 pp.) $28.00 | Nov. 4, 2014 978-1-137-27923-1

Historian Roediger (American Studies and History/Kansas Univ.; How Race Survived U.S. History: From Settlement and Slavery to the Obama Phenomenon, 2008, etc.) examines the self-emancipation of slaves during the Civil War as the galvanizing force behind the movements for women’s suffrage and labor improvement.

The author works from the premise that while President Abraham Lincoln vacillated over the Emancipation Proclamation, the slaves were already emancipating themselves in a massive display of biblical “Jubilee.” Fleeing to the woods, depriving the Southern plantations of their labor, and joining and aiding Union lines all created what W.E.B. Du Bois called a “general strike of the slaves.” Roediger shows how this massive selfemancipation from below set in motion “radiating impulses toward freedom,” promoting literacy for freedmen, a pursuit of family ties and a new sense of social motion. For black women, this meant a “control over time,” in the ability to choose their own work, while the idea of women’s suffrage could finally overcome its sense of sheer impossibility. Eventually, such leaders as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott formed important bonds with abolitionist leaders like Frederick Douglass.

Moreover, women during the Civil War did much of the work caring for the sick and wounded, keeping the households running, raising children amid chaos and doing mostly unpaid civic duty: “Women’s suffrage consciously appealed to this heroism in arguing that voting rights were owed women.” The labor movement’s drive for an eight-hour-day gained momentum, and Irish nationalism helped open new space for ethnic solidarity.

In a particularly fascinating chapter, Roediger looks at how the period of Reconstruction also offered an “emancipation from whiteness.” Wounded soldiers returning from war were perceived as “disabled,” just as blacks and women had once been regarded as “unfit” for freedom. By 1869, however, the revolutionary coalitions began to break apart, Reconstruction was betrayed, and terror swept the South.

Slenderly packed scholarship conveying provocative ideas.

Explaining why Justice John Roberts’ surprising support for the Affordable Care Act remains within the bounds of conservative jurisprudence is the takeoff point for Reason senior editor Root in this exploration of how a 150-year-old political and legal conflict has shaped the country.

Where American political life can be divided between progressives and conservatives, the Supreme Court also polarizes around judicial activism versus restraint. As Root notes, one generation’s activists often become the next generation’s conservatives. Felix Frankfurter, a Franklin Roosevelt appointee to the bench in the 1930s, supported the New Deal, but in a 1962 case, Frankfurter opposed extending the protection of law to voters in a Tennessee voting rights case. Robert Bork, appointed by Ronald Reagan and an idol of conservatives, switched from youthful activism in support of the right to contraception to later restraint on the abortion issue. Seemingly opposites, the older Frankfurter and Bork shared judicial views first systematized by early-20th-century judge Oliver Wendell Holmes. For Holmes, the Supreme Court had no business getting involved in political cases that should be left to the responsibility of legislative majorities and the voters who elect them. As Holmes famously remarked in a letter to a friend in 1920, “If my fellow citizens want to go to Hell I will help them. It’s my job.” Damon documents how judicial restraint reduced the 14th Amendment’s intended protections of citizens’ “immunities and privileges” to a matter of contracts. The author also reviews conservative and libertarian efforts on the legal front since the 1980s and provides kudos to the Cato Institute and Institute for Justice for changing the legal agenda. In the last chapter, “Obamacare on Trial,” Root follows that contentious battle and unpacks Roberts’ surprising conclusions.

An intriguing account of judicial and economic policy reflecting controversies within conservatism over civil rights and other issues.

IN THE SHADOW OF ZION Promised Lands Before Israel

Rovner, Adam New York Univ. (352 pp.) $35.00 | Nov. 21, 2014 978-1-4798-1748-1

Travel down some of the lesser-known roads to Jerusalem with an expert guide.

Few books that claim the power to radically change the reader’s worldview deliver on that promise. This informed investigation of several unexplored avenues of Jewish history actually does it. By examining six seldom-discussed attempts to |

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settle a Jewish state outside of Israel, Rovner (English and Jewish Literature/Univ. of Denver) shows how the world might have looked had any of these plans come to fruition. Had the Jewish homeland developed in Angola, Suriname or Grand Island, New York—all considered candidates at one time—how might Jewish history, and world history, have turned out differently? The author meticulously follows in the footsteps of the visionary authors, rabbis and politicians who led hopeful expeditions to far-flung corners of the globe on just such a quest. Rovner writes clearly and precisely, providing a solid historical and geographical context, which he intersperses with personal narratives from his own travels that offer more intimate looks at the landscape and cultures of these countries. Scholars familiar with Jewish history will appreciate the author’s impressive scholarship, while mainstream readers could easily become overwhelmed by a text that is supported by nearly 100 pages of notes and bibliographical references. Similarly, a newcomer to the topic might not make the leap from religious Zionism to geographic territorialism as quickly as Rovner does.

Unremarkable landscape photographs sprinkled throughout the book are perhaps an attempt to draw in more casual readers, but their generic vistas seem at odds with the detailed academic character of the writing. Nonetheless, for those interested in Jewish history, Rovner provides ample evidence for his thought-provoking argument that one success among these varied visions might have changed global geography forever.

A conceptually challenging intellectual history of the global search for a Jewish homeland.

IDEAS OF ORDER A Close Reading of Shakespeare’s Sonnets

Rudenstine, Neil L. Farrar, Straus and Giroux (256 pp.) $26.00 | Nov. 18, 2014 978-0-374-28015-4

A new appraisal of Shakespeare’s lyric poetry.

“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day” is a familiar first line from “Sonnet 18,” one of Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets. Although it is considered to be a love poem, Rudenstine (The House of Barnes: The Man, the Collection, the Controversy, 2012, etc.), an Elizabethan scholar and former Harvard president, argues that taking any sonnet out of sequence distorts its meaning. He sees the lyric poems as interconnected, building a dramatic narrative about a poet’s fraught relationship with a young man he loves and a mistress whom the two men lustily desire. Love, surely, is a theme, but it is a love undermined by faithlessness and deceit, vulnerability and humiliation. Rudenstine groups the sonnets (all appended to his text) into discrete sections that trace the development of themes: the so-called “marriage poems” (1-20) speak to the love between the poet and his younger, wealthier and handsomer friend. In the next group, the poet praises the friend, who has been unfaithful and abandons the poet but begs forgiveness. The friend takes up with the poet’s mistress, the poet questions his own talent and, fearing abandonment by the young man, 112

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“embarks on a full attack...on the friend’s character.” Subsequent sonnets chronicle a tumultuous relationship of reconciliation, betrayal, reunion and renewed proclamations of love. The last sonnets speak to the mistress’s “love-kindling fire” in the hearts—and bodies—of both men. Rudenstine handles gingerly some scholars’ assertion of the possibility of a homosexual relationship between the poet and his friend. While that inference can be supported, the author sees the relationship as a magnetic infatuation, not necessarily sexual, that “beguiles and overwhelms” the poet, causing him to “re-create and sustain it, in spite of continual betrayals.”

Guilt, power, desire and sadism all feature in Rudenstine’s authoritative, meticulously close reading of what he considers to be Shakespeare’s majestic poems.

HELL-BENT One Man’s Crusade to Crush the Hawaiian Mob

Ryan, Jason Lyons Press (304 pp.) $26.95 | Nov. 4, 2014 978-0-7627-9303-7

Ryan (Jackpot: High Times, High Seas, and the Sting that Launched the War on Drugs, 2011) delivers his second true-crime tale, this time covering “Hawaii’s underworld.”

When Charles Marsland’s son was murdered, he vowed to find the killers. As a lawyer, Marsland had more recourse than most parents in his position, and he used it to his advantage.

Marsland blamed his son’s death on the Mafia that he and others were convinced was running Honolulu into the ground.

His son, nicknamed Chuckers, had connections with the mob through his work as a bouncer. Marsland asked for and received a transfer from the city’s civil law department to the criminal department, and though he was fired from that position, he was later elected by the people to serve as the top city prosecutor.

It’s an intriguing tale, to be sure, but the hard facts seem to be in short supply, leaving Ryan with conjecture and engaging anecdotes but without a clear way to weave Marsland’s search for his son’s killers into his exploration of the underworld he wanted to expose. Like many authors of Mafia-related books, Ryan uses even tangentially related players to move the narrative forward. While portions of the book are gripping and Marsland’s search for justice takes him through a twisted landscape, the accompanying heartbreak and frustration that would have connected him with readers are lost in a sea of facts and disputes within Hawaii’s legal world. Even the promised juxtaposition of gritty crime with tropical paradise falls flat; the Mafia is clearly a presence in Hawaii, but its reach into everyday life is left largely unexplored, beyond general fear and rising crime rates.

Marsland was never able to convict the men he believed responsible for his son’s death, so readers are left without closure.

Without well-known criminal names or impressive crimes to pull an audience in, this will likely appeal only to Mafia buffs.

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“Weaving a tale that is simultaneously about race, failed systems, money, sex, family and simple rage, Safran truly did lose a year in Mississippi, and getting lost with him is a joy.” from god’ll cut you down

GOD’LL CUT YOU DOWN The Tangled Tale of a White Supremacist, a Black Hustler, a Murder, and How I Lost a Year in Mississippi Safran, John Riverhead (368 pp.) $27.95 | Nov. 28, 2014 978-1-59463-335-5

A murdered white supremacist sparks a remarkable investigation that is anything but straightforward.

It’s not often that the retelling of a brutal murder is full of laughs, but documentarian and debut author Safran is an entertaining writer. After becoming fascinated by the true-crime genre, in 2010, he heard about the murder of white supremacist Richard Barrett, whom he had once pranked for a TV series. Armed with some personal knowledge of the victim, Safran headed for Mississippi, where he expected to uncover a racially charged crime and a defendant deserving his sympathy. However, he discovered that Barrett’s black neighbors were mourning the victim, unaware that he was racist. That confusion was only the beginning. Whispers of homosexuality, possible schizophrenia and more continued to surface, with each new layer murkier than the last. Safran bounced among police and lawyers and families, neighbors, acquaintances and enemies of both the victim and perpetrator, and he documents every step, misstep, conspiracy theory and just plain weird encounter. While laughing at himself and the often absurd situations in which he was embroiled, Safran creates a rare animal: a true-crime account that provides no hard answers or even smoking guns but plenty of promised ones. The narrative moves in so many directions it feels like a carnival fun house—though it’s always a pleasurable reading experience. Safran never found a way to neatly wrap up the story. Instead, he presents all the layers and angles, portraying a world that is more than black and white, where sometimes the absolute truth is an impossible dream and the only option left is acceptance of a flawed mystery.

Weaving a tale that is simultaneously about race, failed systems, money, sex, family and simple rage, Safran truly did lose a year in Mississippi, and getting lost with him is a joy.

THE UNIVERSAL TONE Bringing My Story to Light

Santana, Carlos with Kahn, Ashley and Miller, Hal Little, Brown (544 pp.) $30.00 | Nov. 4, 2014 978-0-316-24492-3 The Mexican-American classic guitar legend (and 2013 Kennedy Center honoree) shares his life before and beneath the rock ’n’ roll spotlight with the assistance of Kahn (The House that Trane Built: The Story of Impulse Records, 2006, etc.) and Miller. |

In this frank and impassioned memoir, iconic, influential musician Santana, 67, known for fusing rock and Latin rhythms, weaves together the rhythmic, domestic and spiritual dimensions of his career. A meager, rocky childhood was spent traversing southwestern Mexico to Tijuana and finally San Francisco, all while being greatly influenced by a disciplinarian mother and a romantic, violinist father who “lived to play, and he played to live... what musicians are meant to do.” Generously reflective and wellbalanced, Santana’s memoir glides across autobiographical anecdotes of his joyful immersion in music theory and guitar lessons yet also addresses the intense emotional pain and confusion of being molested as a boy. Santana’s burgeoning career as a blues-appreciative guitarist bloomed through decades steeped in Bill Graham–produced shows at the legendary Fillmore venue, admiring Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, the Doors and the Grateful Dead, then into the psychedelic Summer of Love and the first formation of his Latin rock group Santana Blues Band in 1967. Complementing the uproarious stories of the band’s tours are reflections on his personal life, his 34-year marriage and subsequent remarriage, and an exhaustive listing of his friendships with rock luminaries. Charismatic and soulful, Santana writes with the benefit of what he calls a “celestial memory,” whereby only the blessings and beauty of life are measured and celebrated. Even readers skimming for tabloid dirt may be swayed by the respectful purity of Santana’s recollections; his moments of struggle and frustration are handled with the same dignity and grace as his many triumphs.

An appreciative and unpretentious chronicle, this is required reading for Santana fans and devotees of classic rock legends.

FOXCATCHER The True Story of My Brother’s Murder, John Du Pont’s Madness, and the Quest for Olympic Gold Schultz, Mark with Thomas, David Dutton (320 pp.) $26.95 | Nov. 18, 2014 978-0-525-95503-0

Memoir of time spent with a deeply unpleasant and, in the end, murderous mogul.

John du Pont (1938-2010) had it all: He grew up wealthy on a huge estate near Philadelphia with all the toys, and his fortune was inexhaustible. His passions were diverse, and he had a museum-worthy collection of natural history specimens. He also sponsored athletes, funding training for young Greco-Roman enthusiasts. “Now, I realized, he was collecting wrestlers,” writes athlete and trainer Schultz, his tone characteristically aggrieved.

“We were his newest trophies...and we were more fun to play with than his seashells and birds because we were collectables that he could manipulate.” Inexpert at human relations, du Pont seems to have wanted to buy acceptance, and even though, Schultz insists, the wrestlers had nothing but contempt for him, they seem not to have had any trouble taking his money. In the end, du

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Pont shot Schultz’s wrestler brother to death and, ever disassociated, went off to prison for his crime, where he died. The author establishes that du Pont was manipulative and abusive and would have been very lonely without his money. (“I get it that it must be tough growing up rich, not knowing whether people like you because of your money or because of who you are.”) Yet Schultz does little more than recount all those negative things, undermining his narrative authority by admitting to such things as using drugs on du Pont’s dime, contemplating killing du Pont himself and taking the money without qualm (“John paid me forty thousand dollars per year even though I had left”). He gives no strong evidence for why the court was in error in deeming du Pont mentally ill, though he insists du Pont was feigning insanity, and he makes no compelling case for thinking the verdict was flawed.

A clumsy account about a tragic collision in which justice seems already to have been served.

THERE WAS A LITTLE GIRL The Real Story of My Mother and Me Shields, Brooke Dutton (336 pp.) $26.95 | Nov. 18, 2014 978-0-525-95484-2

Shields reflects on the protective— and stifling—relationship between her and her mother.

Different generations of people know the actress from different phases of her lengthy TV and film career. She began as a model at 11 months old and would go on to star in popular movies such as Endless Love and The Blue Lagoon.

She continued in TV with Suddenly Susan and has spent years as a strong advocate for treatment of postpartum depression. In some ways, she is an aberration: Many child stars shine brightly for a short time and then either retreat to a private adulthood or end up in some poorly considered variation of a Miley Cyrus– type lifestyle. Shields’ more dignified path through life is in no small part thanks to her mother, Teri, and following her death in 2012, Shields was horrified to find the obituary rife with misrepresentations. This book is her effort to set the story straight. As Shields notes in the introduction, it’s not an effort “to idealize her or condemn her,” and the narrative walks a line between the two, detailing the efforts her mother made—mostly successful— to walk her own fine line between being her daughter’s promoter and being her mother. As the author’s social sphere expanded, she and her mother were like two different planets, pulling in other actors and actresses, high-society couples and directors. At times, their intense gravity worked against each other, but Shields continued her ascent. Teri found herself in the grip of a battle with alcohol, and as the book shows, her addiction became a powerful, destructive third force.

Shields writes with considerable reflection; she’s done the hard work of making sense of the contradictions in her mother, and now we get the benefit of her sharing what she’s learned.

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I MUST SAY My Life As a Humble Comedy Legend

Short, Martin with Kamp, David Harper/HarperCollins (336 pp.) $26.99 | Nov. 4, 2014 978-0-06-230952-5 Actor, singer and spasmodic funnyman Short delivers a memoir with cameos by his famous characters.

The youngest of five children, Short (b. 1950) credits his quick wit to a Darwinian struggle for the last word at family dinners, as the children battled the acerbic sarcasm of their father. A precocious child, the author would record his own bedroom variety show, but he’d never considered show business a legitimate future until his senior year of college, when he gave himself a year to pursue his dream. Luckily, Short got his first big break as part of the Toronto production of the off-Broadway smash Godspell. Short even boasts the scene had a “Paris-in-the’20s thing going on” due to all the would-be stars that were around, including John Candy, Catherine O’Hara, Eugene Levy, Gilda Radner, Dan Ackroyd and Paul Shaffer. Most of them were associated with Godspell or with the comedy group Second City, which Short would later join, eventually landing on Saturday Night Live and then beginning a film career. For all his success, Short notes with genuine pathos that it wasn’t without sacrifice; he suffered the losses of his oldest brother, mother and father all by the time he was 20.

He also recounts the loss of his beloved wife to cancer. Ever positive, he reflects that these tragedies gave him a fearlessness about life. Though he was tenacious, Short jokes that his tombstone will bear only the word “Almost,” as her never quite ascended to official movie stardom. Matching the successes of films like Three Amigos and Father of the Bride were misses like Clifford and a daytime talk show that failed to be the career second coming Short imagined.

He experiences all this doubt despite winning an Emmy and a Tony, which again only proves his drive and versatility, rightfully earning him the nickname “Mr. Entertainment.”

A true vaudevillian, Short is always on as he delivers funny anecdotes from a diffuse and storied career.

THE NEW CENSORSHIP Inside the Global Battle for Media Freedom

Simon, Joel Columbia Univ. (240 pp.) $27.95 | Nov. 11, 2014 978-0-231-16064-3

As the executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, Columbia Journalism Review and Slate contributor Simon (Endangered Mexico: An Environment on the Edge, 1997) has a worthy agenda, which he advances here in a manner devoid of both sensationalism and much literary flair.

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“A provocative, carefully reasoned argument, anathema to politicians as disparate as Barack Obama and Rand Paul.” from america in retreat

Mainly, the author lets the facts speak for themselves, using the murder of Wall Street Journal South Asia bureau chief Daniel Pearl as a springboard for an examination of how “Pakistan not only was one of the most deadly countries in the world for the media but also had one of the world’s worst records for bringing the murderers of journalists to justice.” Effective journalism requires presence close to the action, and thus closer to danger, and as news organizations have reduced their international staffing, the void has been filled by bloggers, freelancers and activists, lacking whatever resources and protection that institutional backing might have afforded them. The Internet might make it easier for such journalists to get the word out, but cybertechnology also makes them easier to track and monitor and for terrorists to respond with “institutionalized and now ritualized kidnapping, featuring hostage videos to exert political influence and secure ransom.” Though much of the book explores repression in totalitarian regimes, the United States and its supposedly free press doesn’t escape criticism: “For freedom of expression advocates, the U.S. efforts to use the Internet to spy on the world while simultaneously promoting freedom of expression online are contradictory.” As an extended policy paper, the book expands the traditional definition of “journalist” and suggests that awareness of the problem might be the first step toward reducing such censorship, which has often taken such ruthless forms.

Not so much a powerful reading experience as an attempt to influence international policy.

SHACKLETON

By Endurance We Conquer

Smith, Michael Oneworld Publications (464 pp.) $30.00 | Nov. 11, 2014 978-1-78074-572-5 978-1-78074-573-2 e-book

“[Ernest] Shackleton today is a cult figure who has assumed a mythical, almost saintly status,” writes journalist Smith (Great Endeavour: Ireland’s Antarctic Explorers, 2010, etc.) in this fascinating exploration of the man behind the myth.

Given high honors and knighted by the king, Sir Ernest Shackleton (1874-1922) could not find his feet on shore. The author describes him as a paradoxical figure, an inspirational leader who excelled at improvisation when he was on the ice but a restless and impatient person when he was back in England. Unable to “spot a charlatan in a business suit,” Shackleton failed at a series of business ventures and “spent a life in the futile pursuit of riches, [leaving] behind a trail of debts” after his death during a fourth polar venture. Smith ranks Shackleton among the greatest explorers, yet he was held back by a lack of practicality, exemplified by his underestimation of the need for prowess in handling dogs and skis for ease of travel on ice. The author presents a lively account of the race to the South Pole, ultimately won by the Norwegian Roald Amundsen in 1911, and the bitter rivalry between Shackleton and his other British contender, Robert |

Scott. Although they sailed together in 1908, their first polar venture, they were directly contending for financial support as well as high honors. On the first (joint) trip, they succeeded in setting up a base and exploring the terrain, and Shackleton’s second venture to the polar region brought him within tantalizing proximity to the pole. Both trips were scientific milestones. A third trip to Antarctica narrowly averted disaster when their ship was destroyed. Launched at the start of World War I, the expedition’s sponsors were hard-pressed to find funding for a relief expedition.

An illuminating perspective of the man, his mission and the era in which he lived.

AMERICA IN RETREAT The New Isolationism and the Coming Global Disorder Stephens, Bret Sentinel (288 pp.) $27.95 | Nov. 18, 2014 978-1-59184-662-8

In his first book, the Pulitzer Prize– winning foreign affairs columnist for the Wall Street Journal surveys the tumultuous international scene and calls for America to do what great nations have always done: Lead.

By any objective measure, writes Stephens, the United States is not in decline. We’ll be the world’s leading power for decades to come, the chief adversary for the likes of China, Russia and Iran, and “the preferred target for any ambitious terrorist group.”

For the past 10 years, however, the nation has been in retreat, shrinking from international responsibilities. In this mostly persuasive polemic, the author outlines the persistent tension in our history—in both major parties—between the impulse to retire entirely from the world or to try to save it. Stephens rejects isolationism outright, but he also warns against the messianic foreign policies that have motivated presidents as different as Woodrow Wilson and George W. Bush. Instead, he calls for America to accept a much more pedestrian, if absolutely necessary, role: to keep order. He realizes that war-weary, recession-battered Americans won’t want to hear it, but necessity obliges us to resume the burden we shouldered during the Cold War as the world’s policeman. This middle course—America as the world’s “stop-and-frisk” cop (and Stephens is fully aware of the opprobrium his argument will generate)—dispenses with fanciful notions of redeeming the world, of winning hearts and minds, in favor of more modest, still difficult, aims: shaping behavior of would-be foes, deterring our enemies, acting forthrightly in our self-interest, and seeking incremental rather than transformational change. Fending off international disorder, he concedes, will require increased defense spending and wider deployment of more assets for the protection of our friends. More than anything, halting our retreat requires a political will currently not much in evidence.

A provocative, carefully reasoned argument, anathema to politicians as disparate as Barack Obama and Rand Paul.

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“Hockney from age 38 to 75, bubbling with enthusiasm.” from david hockney

CHAUCER’S TALE 1386 and the Road to Canterbury

Strohm, Paul Viking (304 pp.) $28.95 | Nov. 13, 2014 978-0-670-02643-2

Strohm (Humanities, Emeritus/Columbia Univ.; Conscience: A Very Short Introduction, 2011, etc.) brings his authority as a medievalist to this lively biography, focused on Geoffrey Chaucer’s radical change of fortunes in 1386.

At age 43, Chaucer lost his patronage job as controller of customs at the Wool Wharf, was evicted from his London apartment, and was living apart from his wife and mostly estranged from his children. In short, writes Strohm, “he suddenly found himself without a patron, without a faction, without a dwelling, without a job, and—perhaps most seriously—without a city.” In these straits, however, he dedicated himself to the vocation of writing. Strohm notes that Chaucer had completed more than half of his literary works before 1386 but not The Canterbury Tales. Although he devoted time to his craft while he served in various court positions for more than 20 years, he did not yet consider himself a poet but instead “wrote as a matter of personal choice and not for acclaim or reward,” addressing his works to an audience comprised of close friends. That circle of friends, however, fell away with his ouster from London. Strohm argues that the format of The Canterbury Tales directly responded to this lack of audience with a bold artistic strategy: “[T]he vivid portrait gallery of Canterbury Pilgrims” became both tellers of tales and listeners, “a body of ambitiously mixed participants suitable for a collection of tales unprecedented in their variety and scope.” With little historical evidence of Chaucer’s personal life, Strohm judiciously mines official documents and Chaucer’s literary works to draw inferences about his private activities and associations and to reveal his attitudes about love, loyalty, politics and fame. He argues that Chaucer “undoubtedly possessed a competitive edge” over English poets and, intriguingly, his near contemporary Boccaccio.

With vibrant portraits of Chaucer’s contemporaries— including the imperious John of Gaunt and the shifty London mayor Nicholas Brembre—Strohm’s focus on one year in Chaucer’s life offers an expansive view of medieval England.

DAVID HOCKNEY The Biography, 1975-2012 Sykes, Christopher Simon Talese/Doubleday (448 pp.) $40.00 | Nov. 11, 2014 978-0-385-53590-8

Hockney from age 38 to 75, bubbling with enthusiasm.

In this second lively volume of David Hockney’s authorized biography, Sykes (David Hockney, 1937-1975, etc.) covers the artist’s peripatetic, energetic years of fame: major exhibitions (a 1988 retrospective at the 116

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Los Angeles County Museum of Art attracted 16,000 visitors the first week), commissions to design opera and ballet sets, and an outbreak of Hockneymania when his work was exhibited at the esteemed Tate Gallery in London. Typically working from dawn (painting the sunrise from his bedroom window) to dusk, Hockney, a friend told Sykes, “loves to work until he’s so exhausted... his body has already caved in. At that moment he’s making his discoveries and those are inspirational.” The artist thrived on discoveries, which increasingly involved new technologies. Quantel Paintbox allowed him to layer colors without muddying them. He also played with a photocopier, which he found much more creative than lithography, producing “the most beautiful black I had ever seen on paper.” The fax machine inspired “endless experiments” in tone and led to his creating pictures made up of more than one sheet of paper, to be assembled by the recipient. Faxing also enabled him to communicate more easily than by telephone, which became impossible as Hockney became increasingly deaf.

He was excited by the Brushes app on the iPhone, the process of digital drawing on an iPad, and especially the computer, which enabled him to make huge pictures. For a 10-gallery exhibition at the Royal Academy of Art, he produced the largest work ever hung in the gallery’s history. Only the AIDS epidemic and loss of friends and colleagues dampened Hockney’s irrepressible spirits.

Drawing on interviews with Hockney, his siblings, and colleagues; Hockey’s autobiography; and diaries of famous friends, such as Christopher Isherwood and Stephen Spender, Sykes matches his subject’s ebullience in this admiring, well-researched life.

CHASING GOLD The Incredible Story of How the Nazis Stole Europe’s Bullion Taber, George M. Pegasus (500 pp.) $29.95 | Dec. 15, 2014 978-1-60598-655-5

The story of the Nazis’ international bank robberies.

After World War I, Germany was subject to huge reparations to the Allied victors. High unemployment, inflation and fierce anger over the nation’s defeat generated political and social strife that fueled Hitler’s rise to power. As former Time editor and reporter Taber (In Search of Bacchus: Wanderings in the Wonderful World of Wine Tourism, 2009, etc.) shows in this crisp, well-documented history, lust for gold was integral to Hitler’s military ambitions. In 1933, the Germans had six army divisions, a skeleton air force and only one heavy naval cruiser; by 1939, after raiding Austria and Czechoslovakia, the Nazis had built up their military might to 51 army divisions, including four tank units with 6,000 tanks; 21 air squadrons and 7,000 planes; four battleships, 22 destroyers and four submarines. The nation had also trained and equipped 1.25 million soldiers. Before the invasion of Austria in March 1938, Germany had about $149 million in gold, most in hidden

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assets. By the end of the war, the Nazis’ stores totaled almost $600 million. Once Hitler’s rampage began, European nations rushed to safeguard their gold stores by sending bullion abroad, much of it to the United States. By early 1940, the U.S. harbored more than 60 percent of the world’s gold. Taber recounts the tense, often frenetic process of secreting these hordes on trains, trucks and boats, sometimes only yards away from the invading Nazis. Some countries, like Norway, succeeded in saving their gold; most did not. Taber emphasizes that “the German war machine would have ground to a halt long before May 1945” without cooperation from Romania, Portugal, Spain, Turkey and Sweden for materiel, and especially from Swiss bankers, who eagerly sold the Nazis Swiss francs with which to pay for vital war products.

A chilling tale vividly told.

THE STRANGER Barack Obama in the White House

Todd, Chuck Little, Brown (528 pp.) $29.00 | $14.99 e-book | $31.00 Lg. Prt. $30.00 Audiobook | Nov. 11, 2014 978-0-316-07957-0 978-0-316-23486-3 e-book 978-0-316-23486-3 Lg. Prt. 978-1-60024-970-9 Audiobook A biography of the sitting president, who, by the author’s account, would rather be anywhere but Washington, D.C.—or at least, doing anything but practicing politics as usual.

Todd, newly anointed moderator of Meet the Press and a longtime NBC White House correspondent, wonders how so fortunate a campaigner as Barack Obama should “appear to be so bad at practicing the basics of politics in the back rooms of Washington, whether on Capitol Hill, on K Street, or at the Pentagon.” A psychobiography may be needed to delve into the many reasons why Obama shuns confrontation, but in practical matters, Todd has it just about right: Obama is used to going it alone, doesn’t mind the essential loneliness of being the leader of the free world and really means it when he decries the politics of division. All of these things make Obama, in Todd’s overused formulation, a “stranger” in the clubby company town that is Washington. By Todd’s reckoning, Obama may be his own worst enemy, given that in so many instances, his “struggles came from his focus on ends to the exclusion of productive means.” Make nicer with John Boehner, in other words, and things might happen. Of course, as the author details, it doesn’t help that the president’s allies have their own agendas and that policy wonks within the White House can’t agree on whether the economy is good or bad or in between. Still, the author offers a good explanation for why, positively or negatively, Obama seems so removed from both the fray and his own party, having resigned himself, at least in some measure, to the thought that “the Obama brand and the Democratic Party brand were distinct.” |

Without much hard news that hasn’t been written about elsewhere and not the equal of David Remnick’s The Bridge (2010) in literary merit. Yet, both timely and pragmatic, this book is sure to attract attention.

A FAMILY SKETCH AND OTHER PRIVATE WRITINGS

Twain, Mark; Clemens, Livy; Clemens, Susy Univ. of California (200 pp.) $25.95 | Nov. 7, 2014 978-0-520-28073-1

A collection of writings by Twain, his wife and his eldest daughter that depict the day-to-day life of one of America’s most beloved writers and his family.

The six essays that comprise this volume form a unique biography of the Clemens clan during the time of its greatest thriving. The most complete piece, “A Family Sketch,” begins the book. Twain wrote it after the death of his eldest daughter, Susy, in 1896 but never published it. The author introduces readers to his three daughters and several family servants, including a resourceful black butler named George and an Irish wet nurse who “whooped like a Pawnee...swore like a demon...and drank great quantities of strong liquors.” The essay that follows, “A True Story,” was published in fictionalized form in the Atlantic Monthly in 1874. Like “Sketch,” it focuses on portraiture—in this case, of a long-suffering but ever cheerful black servant named Aunt Rachel. The two following pieces are more anecdotal in nature and offer a series of informal observations on the often silly and outrageous but sometimes remarkably wise words and actions of Twain’s daughters. His wife, Livy, adds her voice to the mix in the fifth essay. Comprised of a series of journal entries she kept while the family summered at their Elmira, New York, home in 1884, the piece records the quotidian events of her family. Rounding out the collection is the essay, “Mark Twain” by Susy Clemens. Incomplete and deliberately unedited for spelling errors, Susy speaks with disarming honesty about her famous father and his flaws, which included a “peculiar gait” and teeth that were not “extraordinary.” These essays are refreshing for their at times draftlike quality. At the same time, that they are so “private and unpolished” limits their appeal.

Of interest to Twain scholars and die-hard fans but not to a general audience.

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GEORGE MARSHALL A Biography

Unger, Debi; Unger, Irwin with Hirshson, Stanley P. Harper/HarperCollins (560 pp.) $35.00 | Oct. 21, 2014 978-0-06-057719-3

A biography of George Marshall (18801959) focusing on the general’s overall decency rather than his strategic brilliance.

Having inherited this project after the death of historian Hirshson, the Ungers (The Guggenheims, 2005, etc.) make a valiant attempt to cover Marshall’s accomplished military career and his years as President Franklin Roosevelt’s chief of staff and President Harry Truman’s secretary of state. A graduate of Virginia Military Institute and a protégé of Gen. John Pershing, with early postings in the Philippines and China, Marshall, laconic and humorless, could never garner the kind of position as commander of troops that would have ensured a glorious career. He was most effective at training officers in the late 1920s, organizing Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corp in preparation for his move to Washington to take up a position with the War Plans Division and eventually become chief of staff. This indeed is what the authors believe he should best be remembered for: “creating the American World War II army virtually out of nothing.” As Roosevelt’s wartime right arm, Marshall pushed for the “Europe First” agenda and was deemed too valuable at home to spare as supreme commander of the Allied Expeditionary Forces, yet Marshall’s “complacency” about Japan’s threats on the eve of the Pearl Harbor attack lent his right-wing critics fodder for the rest of his life. The Ungers find him naïve in dealing with the Chinese when sent to negotiate a truce between the Nationalists and the Communists in late 1945; they do not credit him with coming up with the so-called Marshall Plan to help Europe get back on its feet, for which he won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1953. However, Marshall always remained a devoted and dutiful officer.

A yeoman’s effort in service of an admirable subject in need of more good studies about him.

EVER YOURS The Essential Letters

van Gogh, Vincent Leo Jansen; Hans Luijten; Nienke Bakker—Eds. Yale Univ. (784 pp.) $50.00 | Nov. 25, 2014 978-0-300-20947-1

The artist’s troubled life revealed in letters.

In 2009, an illustrated edition of hundreds of letters by Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) was published, annotated by specialists affiliated with the Van Gogh Museum. These letters now are available at vangoghletters.org, which is continually updated 118

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by the Van Gogh Letters Project. Scholars and researchers undoubtedly will consult the authoritative website, since this selection of 265 letters, aimed at general readers, contains few notes or explanatory material. The editors’ introduction contextualizes the letters somewhat by offering a helpful, but brief, overview of van Gogh’s life. The letters serve as a kind of autobiography, attesting to van Gogh’s engagement in art, his trials and aspirations, and, most vividly, his relationship with his younger brother Theo, to whom most letters are addressed. In the late 1870s, van Gogh was floundering, having worked at an art gallery, as a clerk in a bookstore and as an assistant teacher.

Obsessed with religion, he decided to become a minister but failed at theology studies and at gaining admittance to a training course to become an evangelist. His volatility and mood swings so alarmed his parents that they considered committing him to a psychiatric hospital. Theo, heroically patient, encouraged his brother to pursue a career in art, which had interested Vincent since youth. By the fall of 1880, Vincent told Theo that he was “working like mad,” drawing, learning “a wealth of anatomy,” and hoping “that these thorns will bear white flowers in their time, and that this apparently sterile struggle is nothing other than a labour of giving birth.” The majority of the letters chronicle the artist’s final 10 years: his art studies in Antwerp and Paris, move to Arles, artistic admirations, and his deteriorating physical and mental health, which he blamed partly on a “too artistic way of life” and partly on “fatal inheritance.” His descriptions of his own paintings are poetically evocative, and his long, detailed, emotional outpourings offer insight into his suffering, loneliness and dreams.

More context would have been appreciated, but the choices are illuminating of an iconic artist.

THE WOMAN I WANTED TO BE

Von Furstenberg, Diane Simon & Schuster (256 pp.) $26.00 | Oct. 28, 2014 978-1-4516-5154-6

High-fashion doyenne von Furstenberg (Diane: A Signature Life, 1998) celebrates a wellspring of wisdom and design inspiration.

Addressing the core factors that made her who she is today, von Furstenberg, 67, shares how her familial roots, love life, celebrity and entrepreneurialism all played a part in molding her psyche. Greatly indebted to and influenced by her mother, a Nazi concentration camp survivor, the Belgium-born designer fondly describes her solitary childhood roots growing up in Brussels instilled with the initiative to explore, be free and exercise self-reliance.

Her thoughts on love and those who influenced her middle years (especially marriages to Prince Eduard Egon and Barry Diller) reads like a sweeping romance novel, thanks in part to the men themselves but more due to von Furstenberg’s penchant for dramatic, lavishly embellished prose. A bout with cancer in the mid-1990s perhaps enhanced her appreciation

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“A scholarly, analytical and sympathetic biography of the evangelist Billy Graham, who for decades was what the title proclaims.” from america’s pastor

for a homeopathic lifestyle and a passion for nature, rearing her children and the experience of grandparenting. She also shares thoughts on youth, beauty, aging and the many rewarding moments throughout her decades in fashion merchandising.

Von Furstenberg’s global luxury-lifestyle empire’s multitiered ascent, borne from the design of the iconic and timeless wrap dress, has crested somewhat, requiring a more recent rebranding and reidentification. In the final section, she braces herself for the compounded challenge of restoring her brand’s luster and reigniting interest in DVF, including a comeback runway show featuring Google Glass. Though much of her autobiographical material can be found in her debut memoir, the fashionista digs deeper this time, swapping pages of name-dropping for introspective insights and sage advice, all while keeping her saga compelling and spicy.

With humility and honesty, von Furstenberg’s reflections on a life lived in the grandiose couture spotlight will delight both trendy, fashion-forward readers and budding designers eager to follow in her footsteps.

MY BATTLE AGAINST HITLER Faith, Truth, and Defiance in the Shadow of the Third Reich

von Hildebrand, Dietrich Translated by Crosby, John Henry Image/Doubleday (352 pp.) $28.00 | Oct. 21, 2014 978-0-385-34751-8

The edited journals of a fearless antiNazi philosophy professor and theologian in Munich reveal exceptionally brave activism and resistance.

A young convert to Catholicism, von Hildebrand (18891977) was the son of the neoclassical German sculptor Adolf von Hildebrand and grew up in Italy before studying philosophy at the University of Munich, where he became a professor in 1919. In this memoir, written in the late 1950s and substantially edited and translated by Crosby and the team at the Hildebrand Project, he recounts his increasingly outspoken views about the rise of Nazism, which he believed was fundamentally opposed to Christianity. In his chronicles from 1921 to 1937, he delineates his growing alarm at the rise and violence of the Nazis and their tenets of nationalism, militarism, collectivism and anti-Semitism—views he openly expressed at conventions among his fellow Catholic theologians, who were frequently on the side of appeasement and collaboration. After Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch of 1923, von Hildebrand was horrified to realize that “Bavaria had fallen into the hands of criminals,” and he also expressed what he saw as a deeply anti-aesthetic ideology of the Nazis: “a flat, gloomy and incredibly trivial world, a barren and ignorant mindset.” At the time, von Hildebrand’s students were impressed by his “intuitive power,” yet once Hitler became chancellor in January 1933, von Hildebrand realized he could not stay in Germany without making moral compromises.

With his wife and son, he fled to Vienna, where he cultivated |

relationships with like-minded leaders such as Engelbert Dollfuss, the Austrian chancellor who resisted the Anschluss and agreed to help von Hildebrand start an anti-Nazi journal devoted to “the battle against antipersonalism and totalitarianism.” From Vienna, he and his family eventually fled to Toulouse, France, then New York in 1940. Crosby also includes several of von Hildebrand’s stringent essays from the 1930s.

Startlingly prescient words from a moral crusader during a perilous time.

AMERICA’S PASTOR Billy Graham and the Shaping of a Nation

Wacker, Grant Belknap/Harvard Univ. (398 pp.) $27.95 | Sep. 29, 2014 978-0-674-05218-5 A scholarly, analytical and sympathetic biography of the evangelist Billy Graham (b. 1918), who for decades was what the title proclaims.

Wacker (Christian History/Duke Univ.; Heaven Below: Early Pentecostals in American Culture, 2001, etc.) is not interested in exploring Graham’s personal life (although some cannot be avoided). Instead, he offers a thematic approach, looking at Graham through a variety of lenses and trusting that this multiple-image approach gives readers a more comprehensive portrait of this unique man—and it does. Although some readers might wish for more National Enquirer or People magazine (and still others for either a paean or a disembowelment), Wacker sticks to his objectives throughout, and so we emerge with a more complete, nuanced understanding of Graham’s personality and ministry. The titles of Wacker’s chapters tell the story: “Preacher,” “Entrepreneur,” “Pastor,” “Patriarch” and others.

In each section, the author focuses on what Graham said and wrote—though the latter is sometimes difficult to determine, for once he became successful, Graham employed a number of “editorial assistants” and, with their help, produced more than 30 books and countless sermons, newspaper columns and other writings. (Graham did not preach from a text, but he did have topics listed.) About the best Wacker can say is that the ideas were always Graham’s, if not all the words. The author also shows us a profoundly authentic Graham, a true believer, a man who was not mercenary, who practiced what he preached, whose principal weaknesses might have been his name-dropping and hobnobbing with the rich and the powerful—including American presidents. (He liked Nixon and prayed with Clinton; only Truman disdained him.)

Some readers may tire of the uniform patterns of the chapters and the author’s dispassionate voice, but vast research composes the foundation of a very sturdy structure.

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THE SPHINX Franklin Roosevelt, the Isolationists, and the Road to World War II

Wapshott, Nicholas Norton (400 pp.) $27.95 | Nov. 10, 2014 978-0-393-08888-5

Ambiguity and uncertainty are major themes in this examination of Franklin Roosevelt’s leadership in the years

before Pearl Harbor.

What’s a politician to do? In 1941, 70 percent of the American public favored backing Britain against Hitler, even at the risk of war; 70 percent of the same public wanted to stay out of that war, encouraged by such prominent figures as Charles Lindbergh and the American ambassador to Britain, Joseph P. Kennedy. A year earlier, attitudes were much the same. Roosevelt became convinced that he needed to remain in the White House for an unprecedented third term to bring about the rearmament of a reluctant nation. Somehow, he had to engineer his nomination and election without providing an opening for a challenger from the isolationist wing of his own party. In this elegantly written account, Newsweek international editor Wapshott (Keynes Hayek: The Clash that Defined Modern Economics, 2012, etc.) depicts Roosevelt sowing confusion by encouraging no-hope candidates while remaining coy about his own future. As Britain’s prospects deteriorated, he pushed constantly against the boundaries of the Neutrality Act with every ploy he could imagine, all the while denying any desire to take America to war—though his actual objectives remain uncertain to this day. The villains of the piece are Lindbergh, an anti-Semitic fascist sympathizer whose authoritative overestimates of Nazi strength bolstered those who argued that resistance to Hitler was futile, and Kennedy, an articulate, principled proponent of this defeatism. Though clearly no fan of the noninterventionists, Wapshott showcases their arguments with sufficient clarity to show that, while they proved to be on the wrong side of history, some of their concerns about the evolution of a permanently militarized state with an overweening executive have proved prescient.

Though presented with a pro-Roosevelt tilt, this is history solidly researched and engagingly written. However, it is well-surveyed territory, and the author brings little genuinely new to the discussion.

ONCE UPON A TIME A Short History of Fairy Tale

Warner, Marina Oxford Univ. (226 pp.) $18.95 | Dec. 1, 2014 978-0-19-871865-9

This literary and cultural history of our engagement with, mostly, European fairy tales may be short, but it is far from slight.

Perhaps best known for her seminal From the Beast to the Blonde (1995), a feminist reading of several European fairy tales, Warner (Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights, 2012, etc.) presents a thoughtful, discursive and often personal survey of how “fairy tale” has expressed itself over the centuries. She treats her subject as something of a literary force in itself rather than a collection of discrete stories, continuously emphasizing how deeply embedded it is in Western culture. Her exploration ranges far and wide in discerning its origins and influences, from the obvious—the Grimms, Charles Perrault, Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy, Hans Christian Andersen, Italo Calvino, Angela Carter, Disney—to the less so: the Celtic Mabinogion, Shakespeare, Jane Eyre, Robert Bly and Hayao Miyazaki. Warner touches on commentators as well, discussing the ways such theoreticians as Vladimir Propp, Bruno Bettelheim and Jack Zipes have influenced how we understand fairy tale. This makes for an undeniably dense read, and it is not for beginners, as it presumes some familiarity and requires readers to navigate across centuries, forms and even media. (The maddening design asks readers to physically jump around the book to see illustrations referenced in the text. Readers must decide either to leave Warner’s elegant prose and travel to the front of the book for a page number before finding the illustration itself or to do without.) Although the author’s erudition is on display on every page, this is no starchy academic text; she frequently inserts her own trenchant opinions, as when she declares that Bettelheim “enrages me as he has done many other lovers of fairy tales,” even though she “learned a huge amount from [him].”

Both a beguiling appreciation of and a fascinating tour through faery, this offers riches aplenty for lovers of fantasy fiction, children’s literature and the tales themselves.

ROOKIE SMARTS Why Learning Beats Knowing in the New Game of Work

Wiseman, Liz Harper Business (288 pp.) $28.99 | Oct. 14, 2014 978-0-06-232263-0

Wiseman (co-author: The Multiplier Effect: Tapping the Genius Inside Our Schools, 2014, etc.) provides a big boost for firsttime employees and others who refuse to be bound by arbitrary limits.

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“Geopolitics, the influence of geography on nations, made the United States great and will keep it there, writes the author of this ingenious, optimistic overview of America’s superpower status.” from the accidental superpower

The author poses a fundamental question: “If the amount of information in science doubles every nine months and decays at 30 percent a year, how long does one’s expertise last?” She contends that as technology continues to advance, the time frame dramatically shortens. People will be lucky to be current on just 15 percent of what they knew after five years. Therefore, the premium on new knowledge, as opposed to experience, is growing. Wiseman presents an array of case studies, including those from her own experience with Nike and her organization of Oracle’s in-house university. These demonstrate that leaders who understand how to unleash the potentials of their rookies and junior people can reap outsized results. At Nike, rookies were given the task of educating a conference of executives on their views of the future. They performed so well that they were organized into an informal group called the “New Crew.”

The group is now formalized and contains 300 members, “with top-performing employees contributing and then rotating out of the group after one year, making way for other fresh talent.”

Wiseman points to global organizations that are opening up their leadership ranks to younger people, and she highlights studies about how, in certain nations, when “ruling elites have pulled up the ladder and kept newcomers from getting a foothold, their economies have suffocated and died.” The author views rookie smarts as a “state of mind” characterizing openminded love of inquiry into the new. She examines four different profiles of this state of mind, each of which encompasses its own set of defining characteristics, and she highlights how they may be encouraged and strengthened.

An exciting promotion of lifelong discovery and enthusiasm as answers to routine and business as usual.

DON’T GIVE UP, DON’T GIVE IN Lessons from an Extraordinary Life

Zamperini, Louis; Rensin, David Dey Street/HarperCollins (272 pp.) $22.99 | Nov. 18, 2014 978-0-06-236833-1 A celebrated war veteran and Olympic contender shares his life’s lessons.

Not simply another rehashing of Zamperini’s (Devil at My Heels: A WWII Hero’s Epic Saga of Torment, Survival, and Forgiveness, 2003) incredible history, this second memoir, dictated to co-writer Rensin during the last year of the author’s life, brims with sage wisdom, learned advice and fond observations from his adventurous 97 years. Zamperini answers the most recurring questions asked of him during book signings and lectures, mostly pertaining to his adventures after his service in World War II, his secret to living honorably and what role his faith in God played. The author weaves practical advice into anecdotes on his parents, his troubled adolescence, his post-military spiritual connection with Billy Graham, and how his affinity for distance running on an Olympic level honed enough mental discipline to endure and survive the sadistic torture of a Japanese |

POW camp and the PTSD that followed. The author also provides robust wilderness survival tips, which saved his life while adrift on a life raft in the Pacific Ocean and during his service as a U.S. Army Air Force bombardier. Certainly, his counsel is often platitudinous (exercise forgiveness, challenge yourself, be positive, and give back), but it’s also inspirational, and his words will offer a reflective refresher course for those receptive to it. Never boastful yet full of prideful personality, Zamperini’s tireless zest manifested in his later years with speaking engagements and collaboration with the Angelina Jolie–produced film adaptation of Lauren Hillenbrand’s best-selling book Unbroken (2010), based on his astonishing, fruitful life. Stuffed with bolstering, life-affirmative reinforcement, Zamperini’s legacy lives on through words and film, embodied best by a photograph of the nonagenarian skillfully riding a skateboard.

The inspirational odyssey of an American hero.

THE ACCIDENTAL SUPERPOWER The Next Generation of American Preeminence and the Coming Global Disorder Zeihan, Peter Twelve (384 pp.) $28.00 | $14.99 e-book $25.98 Audiobook | Nov. 4, 2014 978-1-4555-8366-9 978-1-4555-8367-6 e-book 978-1-4789-8311-8 Audiobook

Geopolitics, the influence of geography on nations, made the United States great and will keep it there, writes the author of this ingenious, optimistic overview of America’s superpower status.

Zeihan, founder of Zeihan on Geopolitics, adds that America hit the jackpot, geopolitically speaking, inheriting “...the best lands in the world for a very low price in terms of blood, treasure, and time.” He downplays the claim that American power is declining, pointing out that in 1945, we produced one quarter of the world’s gross domestic product and spent as much on the military and controlled as much naval tonnage at the rest of the world combined. The change in 2014: zero. But some things are changing. Resources are diminishing, energy prices are rising, and demographics are inverting. Baby boomers are now retiring to collect benefits paid for by a shrinking number of younger, working taxpayers. The majority of industrialized nations face financial disaster, except America, which faces only inconvenience. Thanks to fracking, oil and gas production are skyrocketing, and America could be energy independent in five years. Thanks to immigration and vast numbers of childfriendly single-family houses, Americans remain younger than nearly every major culture. Within 30 years, Zeihan predicts, some nations (Greece, Libya, Yemen) will collapse, others (Brazil, India, Canada) will shrink, some (Britain, France, Sweden) will muddle through, and a few (Russia, Germany, Japan, Turkey) will become aggressive. Self-sufficient in food and energy,

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LIVING THE SECULAR LIFE New Answers to Old Questions

America will turn inward, reverting to the role it played before World War II: a global power without global interests.

Historical prognostication has a dismal record, but readers will find it difficult to put down this fascinating addition to the “rise and fall of nations” genre.

COUNTDOWN TO ZERO DAY Stuxnet and the Launch of the World’s First Digital Weapon

Zetter, Kim Crown (304 pp.) $25.00 | Nov. 11, 2014 978-0-7704-3617-9

Iran’s nuclear program spills out into the world’s computers in this true technowhodunit by Wired senior reporter Zetter.

In the weird world of atomic policing, international agencies have only limited access to information under the best of circumstances—and still more limited when the regime is secretive. When Iran began to replace components at an unusually fast pace a few years ago, inspectors noticed. They had no way of knowing why, and the Iranians weren’t talking, but the cause was devilish: “Months earlier...someone had quietly unleashed a destructive digital warhead on computers in Iran...to sabotage Iran’s uranium enrichment program and prevent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from building a nuclear bomb.” That “someone” is the object of Zetter’s quest, and it would spoil her fun to tell who it turned out to be. Suffice it to say that, as she notes, there’s a whole Pandora’s box effect to the business of digital warfare and that once the identity of the aggressor was established, it became difficult for that party to cry out in moral aggrievement when other parties began to unleash similar warheads. Zetter writes lucidly about mind-numbingly technical matters, reveling in the geekery of malware and espionage, and she takes the narrative down some dark electronic corridors, as when she describes the deployment of a hidden Trojan horse designed to harvest transactional information specifically from Lebanese banks suspected of being involved in laundering Iranian funds. Readers don’t have to know steganography from a stegosaurus to follow the discussion, though some programming background is surely of help in following some of the more arcane details.

Governments, hackers and parties unknown are launching ticking computer time bombs every day, all coming to a laptop near you. Zetter’s well-paced study offers a sharp account of past mischief and a glimpse of things to come.

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Zuckerman, Phil Penguin Press (288 pp.) $25.95 | Dec. 4, 2014 978-1-59420-508-8

Zuckerman (Sociology and Secular Studies/Pitzer Coll.; Faith No More: Why People Reject Religion, 2011, etc.) seeks to sever the association of secularity with nothingness.

The author understands the human impulse for religious guidance and has experienced “the intangible benefit of such a communal act”—e.g., when a congregation gathered in a serene gesture of solace for a couple whose baby had just died. Zuckerman also doesn’t come from a place of pure rationalism, though that has its place: “It’s simply a matter of a lack of evidence.” Living an ethical and generous life emerges from the creation of a framework out of experience, a comprehensible base from which to find meaning, without any moral outsourcing, and paying attention to one of those little truisms (and one of Zuckerman’s go-to beacons), the golden rule, empathetic reciprocity. His writing is both sturdy and inviting as he explains the traits he has observed in secular America: “self-reliance, freedom of thought, intellectual inquiry, cultivating autonomy in children, pursuing truth...and still enjoying a sense of deep transcendence now and then amid the inexplicable, inscrutable profundity of being.”

Look to your conscience, he writes, which is both complicated and cultivated, without “a simple, observable, obvious origin.” It is a construct whose components are comprised of experiences that meld the civil with the rational and meaningful. Throughout the book, the author chronicles his interviews with secular and nonsecular people, trying to ferret out the sources of their worldviews. He is a hungry interviewer, but he also steps back and scrutinizes his findings to demonstrate how “[w]hat it means to be secular—and the cardinal virtues of secular living—are...deeply important matters to recognize and understand.”

As Zuckerman makes clear, without resorting to smugness, secularity is not nothing but rather a way of living that enhances moral virtues and promotes human decency.

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children’s & teen BUNNIES!!!

These titles earned the Kirkus Star:

Atteberry, Kevan Illus. by Atteberry, Kevan Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins (32 pp.) $12.99 | Jan. 27, 2015 978-0-06-230783-5

WORST IN SHOW by William Bee; illus. by Kate Hindley..............124 THE WAR THAT SAVED MY LIFE

by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley..........................................................126 A WONDERFUL YEAR by Nick Bruel...............................................128 LOWRIDERS IN SPACE by Cathy Camper; illus. by Raúl the Third.......................................................................129 AUDACITY by Melanie Crowder....................................................... 131 HELLHOLE by Gina Damico.............................................................. 132 CHIMPANZEE CHILDREN OF GOMBE by Jane Goodall; photos by Michael Neugebauer........................................................... 136 THE BOOK OF STORMS by Ruth Hatfield....................................... 137 FDR AND THE AMERICAN CRISIS by Albert Marrin....................150 EARMUFFS FOR EVERYONE! by Meghan McCarthy..................... 151 MAPLE & WILLOW TOGETHER by Lori Nichols............................. 155 ALL THE BRIGHT PLACES by Jennifer Niven.................................. 155 STORY THIEVES by James Riley........................................................158

What can you say about a title that includes three exclamation points? That it is full of pastel colors, that its hero is a monster called Declan (named only on the cover flap) and that it has very few words.

Declan is light blue with darker blue polka dots and has orange horns and a pink puffball at the end of his tail, and he greets everything: trees, clouds, butterflies and—bunnies!!! Four bunnies (peach, mint green, pink and blue) are quite startled by his enthusiasm; in fact, they flee it. Declan is crestfallen. He listlessly continues through the woods, saying hello limply to rock and stump and slug until he sees the foursome again, and they once again dash out of sight. Declan sadly greets a log and then the dirt and is drifting off into a sleepy funk when the bunnies approach, realizing he will not hurt them. They tap him on the back, and he wakes to spin them around and dance and play. But wait! Soon he is distracted by birdies! The birdies are pretty startled, too. Declan definitely has a toddler’s personality, especially one who finds his energy is overwhelming for some playmates. His friendship drama plays out in a mix of horizontal panels, full-page illustrations and double-page spreads (when he is at his most manic).

Somewhat simplistic in both art and story arc but good for a chuckle or two in early storytimes and for those just beginning to pick out words—like BUNNIES!!! (Picture book. 3- 6)

SUPERTRUCK by Stephen Savage.....................................................159

THE LAW OF LOVING OTHERS

THE STOLEN MOON by Rachel Searles............................................160

Axelrod, Kate Razorbill/Penguin (240 pp.) $17.99 | Jan. 8, 2015 978-1-59514-789-9

DEEP SEA by Annika Thor................................................................162 HOLD TIGHT, DON’T LET GO by Laura Rose Wagner..................... 163

Home for the holidays from her posh Pennsylvania boarding school, high school junior Emma is shocked to learn her mother’s long-hidden schizophrenia has resurfaced.

Emma feels blindsided by both her mother’s behavior—she suffers from the delusion that their family is under constant, creepy surveillance—and the belated disclosure of her illness. (Diagnosed years earlier, it’s been well-controlled with medication.) Emma seeks solace with |

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from 450 to six: the 2014 kirkus prize finalists in young readers’ literature What do you get when you put three ferociously smart, opinionated people together to talk about books? You get hours (and I do mean hours, spread over three days) of grueling, stimulating book discussion, lots of disagreement—and one incredible shortlist, the details of which you’ve already read about in our editor in chief’s column on Page 1.

The three judges on the Young Readers’ Literature panel were Dr. Claudette Shackelford McLinn, a librarian and educator; Linda Sue Park, author of the Newbery Medal–winning A Single Shard; and John Edward Peters, a librarian and a long-standing Kirkus critic.

Over the past several months, they read some 450 children’s and teen books starred

by Kirkus over the past year and sifted through them for those titles they felt had, as Peters expressed it, “that presidential quality.”

For me, as an eavesdropper, it was especially gratifying to see what each judge brought to the process. McLinn made sure the actual children for whom the books are meant were remembered at every step of the way.

Park provided fascinating insights into the craft of writing.

And Peters supplied incredibly detailed textual analysis. Exactly as they were meant to work when we first conceptualized the panels.

The judges all agreed that this was a spectacular year for picture books, so spectacular that they grumbled at having to confine their choices to two, and certainly the two that emerged are glorious. Likewise, they commented on the joyous variety among books for middle-grade readers—perhaps because it’s a category that’s been overlooked in favor of the more lucrative teen market, the overall quality among them was very high. Finding “that presidential quality” in the teen books was the greatest challenge, even though there were many on offer. A stellar dystopian is still a dystopian, but still there were many that stood out.

Getting these six to one will be another arduous discussion, but whichever book the judges pick, it will be a great one. —V.S.

her boyfriend, Daniel, but needy, anxious and subject to panic attacks, she wants more than he is prepared to give. Phil, whose brother is a fellow patient of Emma’s mother, is more understanding—and attractive. Emma’s fear of developing her mother’s condition isn’t easily assuaged, however. Daniel, Phil, her mother and other characters are briefly allowed to speak for themselves and then elbowed aside, sentenced to storytelling limbo so Emma can do it for them. A hands-on narrator, selfinvolved Emma’s hard to like. Title notwithstanding, hers is a narcissistic world of bright, overprivileged teens who in their copious free time enjoy casual sex, drink heavily, smoke weed and snort cocaine with friends and at home, with tacit parental consent if not approval, in settings ranging from affluent Westchester suburbs to a spacious apartment on Central Park West.

Family mental illness is rarely explored in novels for teens, but this one, trudging a well-worn path across toofamiliar terrain, fails to fill the void. (Fiction. 15-18)

WORST IN SHOW

Bee, William Illus. by Hindley, Kate Candlewick (40 pp.) $15.99 | Jan. 6, 2015 978-0-7636-7318-5

Can Sidney win the Best Pet Monster in the World! competition? His best friend certainly thinks so.

Sidney the monster is shaggy and pear-shaped and looks to be about 7 feet tall. His owner, Albert, a sober-looking lad in short pants and huge eyeglasses, decides to prove Sidney’s excellence by entering him in the contest. Sidney competes against an array of other monsters in multiple categories: “Hairiest Warts,” “Highest Hover,” “Most Parasites,” “Smelliest Fart” and, finally, “Hottest Breath.” Sidney has a bath every other day, so he has no warts, just a few freckles. He’s scared of heights, so hovering is out of the question, and he only has two parasites—Stan and Ollie, just visiting the top of his head. They’re tourists, really. And so it goes. Because he eats cupcakes and cookies, Sidney’s fart is a sugary whiff. And his breath is merely warm, unlike the fiery exhalations of the other competitors. He finishes last in every category, setting a new record for “Worst in Show” (depicted in an enormous fold-out four-page spread).

Albert might be embarrassed, but instead he’s proud to have such a big, cuddly, lovable best friend. The winning message never obscures the book’s fun. Hindley’s deliciously detailed illustrations, in pencil and paint, digitally colored, bring Bee’s story to boisterous life. The affection between Albert and mildmannered Sidney is palpable.

Just sublime. (Picture book. 3-5)

Vicky Smith is the children’s & teen editor at Kirkus Reviews.

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“Sure, nothing much happens, but the languid pace and bucolic illustrations harken back to a rose-colored–glasses time and exude charm and simplicity.” from the tale of the little, little old woman

SNOOZEFEST

Berger, Samantha Illus. by Litten, Kristyna Dial (40 pp.) $16.99 | Jan. 22, 2015 978-0-8037-4046-4 It’s not Woodstock. It’s not Coachella. It’s SnoozeFest—and it’s for sleeping!

Snuggleford the sloth lives in the rural town of Snoozeville.

In her bedroom, in a red bed, she sleeps for a month at a time, smiling. Only one thing gets her up and out the front door: SnoozeFest. Carrying a snazzy suitcase with zigzag stripes, Snuggleford joins a crowd—bears, koalas, cats—on the bus to the NuzzleDome. Once there, she chooses her sleeping nook (hammock No. 16), buys snacks (milk and honey) and purchases band swag. A pajama fashion show spotlights the famous designers Louis Futon and Diane von Firstinbed. Bands play, among them Chamomile Rage and Drowsy Duet. Participants fall blissfully asleep throughout, as do some musicians (mid-gig!).

While adults will recognize the festival concept better than kids, preschoolers will love the sleep-tailored diction (“naptacular”; “tire-riffic”) and rollicking verse, such as this description of a critical component: “Some of the blankets are in mint condition. / Others collectible, rare, first edition. / Some are so old, they’re all tattered and torn. / This sloth has had hers since the day she was born.” Litten’s digitally created illustrations don’t quite match the wit of Berger’s verse, but they’re quaint and homey, and her nighttime-at-the-fest spreads are done in an inviting deep purple with sparkling lights.

No snoozefest here—great fun. (Picture book. 3- 6)

the languid pace and bucolic illustrations harken back to a rosecolored–glasses time and exude charm and simplicity. Besides, the illustrations are brimming with attractive Swedish style: Red geraniums bloom on white-curtained windowsills, and rustic blue-painted furniture beckons.

It’s possible that readers accustomed to more stimulating entertainment won’t enjoy slowing down, but simpler souls will most likely breathe a contented sigh.

(Picture book. 2-5)

THE TALE OF THE LITTLE, LITTLE OLD WOMAN

Beskow, Elsa Illus. by Beskow, Elsa Floris (32 pp.) $17.95 | Nov. 1, 2014 978-1-7825-0094-0

A picture-book classic translated from the Swedish.

First published over a century ago, Beskow’s tale of the little, little old woman highlights changing tastes in picturebook styles more than anything. Resembling early Tasha Tudor crossed with Carl Larsson and a bit of Beatrix Potter, this story eschews sophisticated storyline and complex visuals. A “little, little old woman” lives in a “little, little cottage” with a “little, little cat” and little, little furniture. She also has a “little, little cow”—well, readers get the idea. The woman milks the cow, the cat drinks the milk, and the woman banishes the cat from the house. The uncomplicated illustrations, enclosed within a circular border, are on the recto, while the simple text is placed on the verso. A few spot illustrations also decorate the text page.

While the presentation may seem sedate and even boring to modern eyes used to clever storylines and dramatic visuals, the overall effect is the opposite. Sure, nothing much happens, but |

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“Ada’s voice is brisk and honest; her dawning realizations are made all the more poignant for their simplicity.” from the war that saved my life

THE DARKEST PART OF THE FOREST

Black, Holly Little, Brown (336 pp.) $18.00 | $9.99 e-book | Jan. 13, 2015 978-0-316-21307-3 978-0-316-21305-9 e-book Black returns to her faerie roots with a fantasy set in our very recognizable modern world.

Hazel lives in Fairfold, a small town in a haunted forest full of the Folk. Brother Ben’s best friend is a changeling; local kids party by the glass coffin containing a horned boy who has slept for generations. Ben himself has magical musical powers, and he and Hazel used to hunt bad Folk when they were kids. But that was before they grew apart and started keeping secrets, before Hazel kissed Ben’s first boyfriend (and lots of boys since). Now a monster menaces the town, and the horned boy is awake. Black clearly knows her lore, and the broad strokes intrigue, but somehow the pieces never jell. Hazel is a series of clichés dressed in outfits described with a little too much precision, a broken girl making out with boys to dull the pain, dreaming of heroics. But there’s no depth; the parental neglect and secrets are so past tense that they lack urgency (and the parents, mysteriously, are now fine). When it turns out Hazel is indeed special, too many plot threads are flying for her journey to carry the novel.

In the end, Black’s latest seems to mirror Hazel’s fears about herself—“as normal and average as any child ever born”—but like Hazel, it’s not without charm. (Fantasy. 13 & up)

REVOLUTION

Black, Jenna Tor (400 pp.) $9.99 paper | $9.99 e-book Nov. 11, 2014 978-0-7653-3373-5 978-1-7643-3373-5 e-book Series: Replica, 3 The stakes are high in the third volume of the series begun with Replica (2013).

Picking up from Resistance (2014), Nadia and Nate are hiding in the Basement from Thea, the artificial intelligence who created a Replica for herself and claims to be the daughter of Nate’s father. Now in control of Paxco, Thea will do anything to see them dead. Joining Nadia and Nate are Kurt, Nate’s lover; Dante, resistance spy and Nadia’s love interest; and Agnes, Nate’s new fiancee. The five teenagers need to find a way to defeat Thea and save Paxco, yet without any resources, there are no good options—so a padded subplot that deals with the Basement and its social structure gives the characters plenty of time to vacillate about what they should do. When they finally 126

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make their move by reaching out to Agnes’ father, chairman of a state with a major military presence, the plot only advances toward the final standoff with Thea thanks to coincidences and clichéd nick-of-time rescues. Nadia and Nate might win, but will they be happy about the aftermath? The previous books in this series have suffered from convenient plotting and mediocre characterization; this work adds poor pacing with the drawnout Basement section.

Most of the loose ends seem to be wrapped up; here’s hoping Black is done with this world. (Dystopian adventure.

14-18)

THE WAR THAT SAVED MY LIFE

Bradley, Kimberly Brubaker Dial (320 pp.) $16.99 | Jan. 8, 2015 978-0-8037-4081-5

Ada discovers there are worse things than bombs after she escapes her Mam’s cruelty during a children’s evacuation of World War II London.

Crippled by an untreated club foot and imprisoned at home by Mam, Ada has survived, but she hasn’t thrived. Only caring for her brother, Jamie, has made life tolerable. As he grows, goes out and tells Ada about the world, her determination to enter it surges. She secretly begins learning to walk and joins Jamie when Mam sends him to the country.

Ada narrates, recalling events and dialogue in vivid detail. The siblings are housed with Susan, a reluctant guardian grieving the death of her friend Becky. Yet Susan’s care is life-changing. Ada’s voice is brisk and honest; her dawning realizations are made all the more poignant for their simplicity. With Susan’s help and the therapeutic freedom she feels on horseback, Ada begins to work through a minefield of memories but still harbors hope that Mam will accept her. In interesting counterpoint, Susan also knows what it is like to be rejected by her parents. With the reappearance of Mam, things come to an explosive head, metaphorically and literally. Ignorance and abuse are brought to light, as are the healing powers of care, respect and love.

Set against a backdrop of war and sacrifice, Ada’s personal fight for freedom and ultimate triumph are cause for celebration. (Historical fiction. 8-12)

HENRY HOLTON TAKES THE ICE

Bradley, Sandra Illus. by Palacios, Sara Dial (32 pp.) $16.99 | Jan. 2, 2015 978-0-8037-3856-0

A young ice skater finds his métier on the ice in a family full of hockey players. And it doesn’t involve a stick. kirkus.com

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Henry Holton’s family is “HOCKEY MAD.” All of them: Mom drives a Zamboni to work, and their dog wears a Wayne Gretzky hockey shirt. Henry takes to the ice like a martini. But... that stick doesn’t feel right. Getting mashed into the boards doesn’t feel right. It is the ice that calls. He’s got a touch of individuality that befuddles, even angers, the Holton clan. “No way,” his father booms when Henry mentions he would like picks on the fronts of his blades. “We’re a hockey family, Henry...a HOCKEY FAMILY!” Henry’s sister, Sally, helpfully chimes in, “Ice dancing is for girls.” But Grandma knows that skating affects people in different ways, and she dusts off her pair of figure skates, which Henry—and bully for him—straps on and takes to the rink. He shines. Both the illustrations—despite the ice, it has the warmth of pencil-and-wash artwork—and the story have a strong but unmenacing quality, neatly conveying an acceptance of Henry’s inclinations and an appreciation of his talent.

It doesn’t matter what you do on the ice, suggests Bradley, just do it with a song in your heart. (Picture book. 4-8)

THE PIED PIPER OF HAMELIN Russell Brand’s Trickster Tales

Brand, Russell Illus. by Riddell, Chris Atria (136 pp.) $19.99 | Nov. 11, 2014 978-1-4767-9189-0

The well-known legend is brought to life once more by one of the U.K.’s most famed comics.

Everyone knows the story of the Pied Piper, and it would be an easy cash-in for any celebrity to regurgitate the tale and wait for the money to come rolling in. Thankfully Brand refuses to take the easy way out. He attacks his first children’s book with full force, coloring the story in with humorous asides, witty turns of phrase and a few choice nuggets of sage wisdom. Illustrator Riddell is just as sharp, filling the book with eye-popping illustrations and beautiful coloring. Brand’s biting humor isn’t

New Books Children will Love Memoirs of an Elf

A Cookie for Santa

“The Gingerbread Man mixes it up with ‘The Night Before Christmas’ in this cleverly constructed Christmas story about a smart cookie who avoids becoming Santa’s midnight snack.” −Kirkus Reviews, September 2014

“Armed with a smart phone for texting, navigating via GPS, and using the camera feature to take an “elfie” of himself and his crew before taking off with Santa on Christmas Eve, Spark is truly a millennial elf.... Spark’s heart, following truisms like “No Santa, no Christmas,” is in the right place.” −School Library Journal, October 2014

Rags, Hero Dog of WWI

“A scrawny mutt is rescued in Paris by an American soldier during WWI, and the smart, intuitive Rags becomes a wartime hero. The true story of the dog’s wartime service is told in dramatic style...” −Kirkus Reviews, June 2014

To order: 866-918-3956

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toned down in the slightest. He includes Snicket-ian jokes about the powers of the author and the purpose of storytelling that will surely fly over a few children’s heads, at least the first time through. More important is Brand’s treatment of the buffoons and bullies that occupy Hamelin: His takes on religion, sexism, consumerism and self-esteem are just as important to the text as the classic tale it’s based on. His opinions are as easy to discern as many a conservative pundit’s, though very much on the other side of the political spectrum.

A smart, funny, iconoclastic take on an old classic.

(Fantasy. 8-12)

CHAOS

Bross, Lanie Delacorte (304 pp.) $17.99 | $10.99 e-book | $20.99 PLB Jan. 27, 2015 978-0-385-74284-9 978-0-307-97736-6 e-book 978-0-375-99080-9 PLB Series: Fates, 2 This continuation of the Fates series lives up to its title with a wild mix of reshuffled time and travel to parallel worlds.

Luc rescued his sister, Jasmine, from the clutches of the Blood Nymphs in series opener Fates (2014). Now Jasmine has no memory of her experiences, but she begins to realize that she has new, heightened sensory abilities. She encounters Executors, bent on murder, but the mysterious Ford rescues her. Meanwhile, Luc becomes determined to restore his love, Corinthe, to life, believing he cannot live without her. He finds a Crossroad and travels to the world where he had met Rhys, who can turn back time, but he finds the Radical on his deathbed. Undaunted, Luc decides to figure out the puzzle for himself and forces his way into the tunnels that connect all the worlds of the universe. There, he meets Corinthe’s fellow Radical Miranda, and they become uneasy co-travelers. After much suspense for both siblings, Luc and Jasmine reach a point in the plot that will propel them into the next sequel. Bross switches viewpoints between Luc and Jasmine, with neither knowing what the other is doing; characterization is strong, changing loyalties and companions emblematic of the series’ theme. The only difficulty is the complicated and constantly evolving plot, which indeed does become quite chaotic.

Entertaining and suspenseful, if complex. (Fantasy. 12-18)

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NO PLACE TO FALL

Brown, Jaye Robin HarperTeen (368 pp.) $17.99 | $9.99 e-book | Dec. 9, 2014 978-0-06-227099-3 978-0-06-227097-9 e-book Fueled by a dream to make it as a singer outside of her small town, one girl struggles to make the right choices as social tensions press against her from all sides.

At just 16, Amber loves nothing more than singing at church and making music with her best friend, Devon, and his handsome older brother, Will. Over the summer, she and Devon frequent the “hiker barn,” where walkers of the Appalachian Trail stop to rest and be merry. Always her mother’s good girl, Amber finds herself turning wild at the hiker barn. When school begins, that little bit of wild sticks to her, and soon new, difficult choices confront her: How does she juggle all the newfound male attention? How does she keep her tenuous group of friends forged over the summer together? And most importantly, how does she make her dream of becoming a trained singer come true? With family and hard times pressing in on her, it isn’t long before Amber has to face the music and ’fess up.

Southern charm oozes off the page, and on the whole, the read is an enjoyable ride. Still, there’s little danger felt, even while Amber’s family flounders and even though the price paid for poor choices is high.

A quick, predictable, romantic read with a denouement that leaves much to be desired. (Fiction. 14-18)

A WONDERFUL YEAR

Bruel, Nick Illus. by Bruel, Nick Neal Porter/Roaring Brook (40 pp.) $17.99 | Jan. 6, 2015 978-1-59643-611-4 A comics-style look at the seasons in four short episodes of buffoonery.

Bruel examines winter first. A girl is excited to play in the snow. However, everyone reminds her to bundle up. Key characters seen again in later stories all pop in to suggest what to wear (the most obvious of her advisers being her mother and father, but a large purple hippo, a tree, a refrigerator and a can of beans weigh in as well). Alas, when she has finally put on all of the clothing, the weather has changed to spring. She slips out of her snowsuit and waves goodbye as the whole outfit walks away, ready to return next year. Bruel creates a clever concept book using dynamic storytelling and infusing each season with droll humor. Spring proves fertile ground for the girl’s exuberant imagination, summer’s heat makes her melt away—literally— and fall leads her to discover the perfect use for the very last leaf of a tree. Each tale is interconnected (it all takes a metafictive turn in the end), and the sparsely paneled comics style keeps the kirkus.com

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“A highly entertaining and culturally authentic romp.” from lowriders in space

story’s focus where it belongs—on its endearing, shaggy-haired heroine (and, of course, the can of beans).

From silly to quite touching, an array of emotions spans this whole wide, wonderful year. (Picture book. 2- 6)

PUPPY’S BIG DAY

Bruel, Nick Illus. by Bruel, Nick Neal Porter/First Second (160 pp.) $13.99 | Jan. 6, 2015 978-1-59643-976-4 Series: Bad Kitty (chapter book) Puppy and Uncle Murray escape a rampaging Bad Kitty for a day’s adventure on the town.

Bad Kitty’s acting crazier than usual.

Puppy never minds, but Uncle Murray rescues him anyway, and the two go for a walk. Uh-oh! Uncle Murray forgot Puppy’s leash, so he gets a ticket from a police officer. Puppy has to do his business and...Uncle Murray has no bags to clean up— another ticket. Puppy’s collar and tags are at home...another ticket. Poor Uncle Murray! Maybe a trip to the dog park will help. Puppy meets a new friend—in the way puppies do—and when he and Uncle Murray get separated, Puppy ends up in the pound. Will Uncle Murray rescue him? What about Puppy’s new friends? And what of Bad Kitty’s conniption? Bruel lets Bad Kitty’s drooling, happy canine sibling have a tale of his own.

As in previous chapter-book–length outings in the series, the story is heavily illustrated and dotted with two-page informational spreads. This time, Bad Kitty takes over Uncle Murray’s lecturing duties to speak on differences in potty habits between cats and dogs and the reasons dogs sniff bottoms. Perhaps it’s not the best of the series, but it offers plenty of good, goofy fun that’s ever-so-slightly instructional.

Bad Kitty fans will certainly embrace Puppy’s first outing since Poor Puppy (2007). (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-11)

ALEX AS WELL

Brugman, Alyssa Henry Holt (224 pp.) $16.99 | Jan. 20, 2015 978-1-62779-014-7 Against her narcissistic parents’ wishes, a teen with an intersex condition decides to start living as a girl.

When the story opens, Alex has been off the male hormones her parents make her take for five days. She has also told her parents that she wants to live as a girl, which has resulted in her father’s leaving and her mother’s becoming furious at what she believes to be meaningless and hostile teenage rebellion. Alex impulsively enrolls herself in a new school, a move that requires surprisingly little paperwork—with the thorny |

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exception of a birth certificate. Alex meets friends for the first time as a girl, begins an unexpected modeling career and works with an unusually accommodating lawyer to correct the gender on her birth certificate. Alex’s voice is bouncy, high-energy and strewn with well-chosen pop-song lyrics. Her first-person narrative voice is often shown in adversarial and sometimes-comic dialogue with a second, male Alex. Interspersed with Alex’s narrative are her mother’s increasingly unhinged and self-absorbed message-board posts about the situation. Most disturbingly, readers learn from the posts that Alex’s mom is slipping Alex hormones without her knowledge—a choice that, oddly, is never revealed to Alex.

Alex is a winning character, but the glimpses into her mother’s twisted point of view are both unsettling and unnecessary. (Fiction. 12-18)

LOWRIDERS IN SPACE

Camper, Cathy Illus. by Raúl the Third Chronicle (112 pp.) $22.99 | $9.99 paper | Nov. 4, 2014 978-1-4521-2155-0 978-1-4521-2869-6 paper Series: Lowriders in Space, 1 Camper’s lighthearted, full-color graphic novel highlights lowrider culture.

There is much that makes it stand out: Its theme is unique for this age group; Lupe Impala, the female protagonist, is a mechanic; and peppered throughout this crazy adventure are nifty factoids and colorful Chicano/Mexican-American slang.

Lupe and her friends Elirio Malaria, the mosquito detailing artist (“Don’t be scared eses! Only lady mosquitos bite vatos for food!”), and El Chavo Blackjack, a bucket-dwelling octopus who’s an eight-armed, car-washing powerhouse, dream of one day owning their own garage. Spotting a poster for a car competition, they know the Golden Steering Wheel Award and a carload of cash are as good as theirs—if they can find a car. A field trip yields a junk pile on blocks—an Impala, natch—that “only” needs major, reconstructive body work, paint, an engine....

Some serendipitous rocket parts launch the trio and their newly souped-up lowrider on a wild ride through space: “I don’t think we’re in the barrio anymore!” observes El Chavo Flapjack cheerily. Raúl the Third’s crosshatched, ballpoint-pen–and-Sharpie artwork is highly detailed and dynamic, its black, blue and red lines on buff-colored paper depicting a street corner aguas frescas pushcart and the lowrider’s hydraulic suspension system with equal verve. A glossary of Spanish, slang and astronomical terms is appended, as is a note about lowriders for readers not in the know.

A highly entertaining and culturally authentic romp.

(Graphic adventure. 9-14)

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“…Katy’s relationship with the mysterious hermit Azrael is as charming as it is critical to the story, and the passages from the ancient book Katy ‘borrows’ from him are rich and haunting.” from seduction

FOR REAL

Cinderella opts for college over a prince; and Beauty discovers knitting is less prickly than spinning. Bright colors, strong line, and clearly differentiated hairstyles and clothing do not quite make up for something of a clunker at the end: “So, by talking things through and her problems amending, / each girl truly made her own fairy tale ending.”

It’s a promising concept but a pallid conclusion. (Picture book. 5- 7)

Cherry, Alison Delacorte (320 pp.) $17.99 | $10.99 e-book | $20.99 PLB Dec. 9, 2014 978-0-385-74295-5 978-0-307-97992-6 e-book 978-0-375-99086-1 PLB A shy girl who loves reality TV is cast in a show in order to help her sister get back at her cheating boyfriend.

Claire, 18, idolizes her older sister, Miranda. Beautiful Miranda makes her way socially with ease, while Claire hides at parties. When Miranda catches her boyfriend, Samir, twotiming her, Claire concocts a plan to beat him on a reality show involving a race around the world, in which Samir already is a contestant. Once on the show, however, the sisters learn that the show has become more about dating than racing, and each is teamed up with a male contestant. Claire winds up with charming Will, to whom she finds herself extremely attracted. The show places contestants in exotic locations and requires them to perform tasks that are frequently bizarre and often embarrassing. Claire yearns for Will when they’re forced to switch partners, losing track of the reason she’s there. Cherry keeps the narrative moving with slapstick, thrusting Claire into ridiculous situations even as she challenges the girl to reconsider her often-wrong first impressions. She creates a wildly diverse cast of characters, writing with both ease and emotional intelligence.

A comic romp with considerable wisdom on the side.

(Romance. 12-18)

SLEEPING CINDERELLA AND OTHER PRINCESS MIX-UPS

Clarkson, Stephanie Illus. by Barrager, Brigette Orchard/Scholastic (40 pp.) $17.99 | Jan. 27, 2015 978-0-545-56564-6

It rhymes. It has cute crossovers. It has doe-eyed princesses who are unhappy

with their lots.

Snow White is tired of cleaning up after seven dwarves, so she takes a walk and discovers the lonely tower of Rapunzel.

Rapunzel is all too thrilled to get out, and Snow White wants to be alone, so they switch places. Trailing her impossibly long, blonde locks behind her, Rapunzel meets up with Cinderella, who would rather sleep than go to a ball. Leaving the pumpkin coach to Rapunzel, Cinderella finds Sleeping Beauty’s bed and keels over into it, accidentally kissing the slumberer on the cheek, which wakens her. Bringing the story full circle, the nolonger-sleeping Beauty comes upon the dwarves’ house, where there is Stuff! To! Do! In the end, of course, the princesses sort themselves back out, with Lessons: Snow White gives each dwarf a chore; Rapunzel negotiates a day trip each week; 130

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SEDUCTION

Cochran, Molly Paula Wiseman/Simon & Schuster (416 pp.) $17.99 | $10.99 e-book | Dec. 2, 2014 978-1-4814-0023-7 978-1-4814-0025-1 e-book Series: Legacy (Molly Cochran), 2 With her boyfriend spending all of his time with his once-estranged uncle, 17-year-old Katy Ainsworth flees to Paris for cooking school and an adventure of her own. Little does she know that a summer abroad will nearly cost her her life.

Cochran (Legacy, 2011) cleverly interweaves Katy’s firstperson, present-day narrative with flashbacks revealed through the pages of an ancient book to bring readers along for an exciting, sexy and sometimes-heartbreaking ride as Katy struggles to uncover the secrets of the mysterious women of the Abbey of Lost Souls. The stakes rise even higher when Peter turns up at the abbey, and Katy becomes increasingly aware that there is more to the remarkably beautiful, though shockingly shallow, women who reside there. Unfortunately, Katy and Peter’s interactions are so few and far between it’s difficult to root for them when Peter seemingly falls under the women’s spell. And when the sultry Belmondo makes a play for Katy, readers will want to shout “Peter who?” That said, Katy’s relationship with the mysterious hermit Azrael is as charming as it is critical to the story, and the passages from the ancient book Katy “borrows” from him are rich and haunting.

Though not perfect, this is a layered and well-told story with an unlikely and endearing heroine. (Paranormal romance.

13 & up)

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UNLOVELY

Conway, Celeste Merit Press (256 pp.) $17.99 | Jan. 2, 2015 978-1-4405-8279-0 As Harley begins dating one of a group of ballerinas, he starts to become suspicious of the potentially threatening behavior of the rest.

Back from his first year of college, he’s on the rebound from the sad ending of his lifelong friendship and recent romantic relationship with Mairin, who has now gotten pregnant by and is about to marry an unsavory and rough-cut local. Harley’s initially thrilled—and stunned—to be dating the graceful and lovely Cassandra; there has been a vast gulf between town residents and the sophisticated ballerinas at Ocean Watch, the local, prestigious ballet academy. The tragic and perhaps not accidental death of a young man at the school several years ago has created an even wider divide. After Cassandra is given the starring role in Giselle, Harley senses both a change in her behavior and an uncomfortable parallel between those disturbing ballerinas and the equally creepy, classic ballet. With Mairin’s life spiraling downward, Harley discovers that the unpredictable Cassandra is an inadequate and maybe even dangerous substitute. The narrative moves believably from predictable romance to somewhat chilling horror; it takes too long for fans of that genre but does add spice to the tale.

Recommended for those who want more than just a romance—or for readers who have an innate dislike for slender, graceful young women with long legs and necks and great posture. (Suspense. 14-18)

TEAR YOU APART

Cross, Sarah Egmont USA (384 pp.) $17.99 | Jan. 27, 2015 978-1-60684-591-2

This sequel to Kill Me Softly (2012) continues the adventures of the teen inhabitants of Beau Rivage, a town where fairy tales live again.

Viv has the Snow White curse. Her stepmother, Regina, clearly wants her dead, and Viv already knows the Huntsman fated to cut out her heart. The trouble is, she and that Huntsman, Henley, have been in love for years. As Viv realizes that the time of the curse is fast approaching, their relationship becomes strained. Viv hopes that Henley won’t kill her, but she can’t be sure. When Regina hires another Huntsman to make sure Viv dies, Viv decides to escape into the underworld. There, she meets the prince who is supposed to save her and marry her to live happily ever after— and she doesn’t like him at all. His father, the king of the underworld, turns out to be an extremely nasty sort indeed, one who |

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will make Viv’s happily-ever-after life into unending torture. Viv still loves Henley, but she’s trapped in the underworld, and Henley can’t get to her. Meanwhile, other fairy tales play themselves out all around Viv. Can Viv find a way to thwart her curse? As before, Cross keeps readers guessing as she unfolds her mashup, bringing the German Märchen versions into the story with satisfyingly gruesome effect.

A fan-pleasing combination of fairy tale and thriller.

(Fantasy. 14-18)

AUDACITY

Crowder, Melanie Philomel (400 pp.) $17.99 | Jan. 8, 2015 978-0-399-16899-4 A novel in verse featuring the real-life Clara Lemlich, a courageous, tenacious warrior for workers’ rights in turn-ofthe-20th-century New York City.

Newly arrived in New York from Russia, she finds employment in a sweatshop, where young immigrant girls toil in dangerous conditions, cheated and harassed by bosses, earning pennies for long hours of work. Sacrificing her dream of an education and in spite of her family’s dire economic straits, she devotes her energy to supporting these girls, fighting for the inclusion of women in the all-male garment union and winning them their own local.

She organizes strikes against individual sweatshops and leads the Uprising of the 20,000, during which she and the other young women strikers are repeatedly beaten by police and hired thugs, arrested and jailed. From her constricted life in a Russian shtetl and difficult journey to America to the choices she makes in her new life, readers hear Clara’s strong, clear voice in action-packed verses that convey with intense emotion her conflicts and conviction, her deepest thoughts, and her doubts and triumphs. Crowder breathes life into a world long past and provides insight into the achievements of one determined woman who knows she will “give / without the thought / of ever getting back, / to ease the suffering of others. / That, / I think, / I will be doing / the rest of my life.”

Compelling, powerful and unforgettable. (historical note, interview, glossary, sources) (Historical fiction/poetry.

12-18)

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HELLHOLE

eels and several all-mouth anglerfish among the sharks, whales and other usual suspects.

Tailor-made for budding zoologists as well as casual browsers. (glossary, index) (Nonfiction. 10-13) (Monsters of the Deep: 978-1-77085-465-9)

Damico, Gina HMH Books (368 pp.) $17.99 | Jan. 6, 2015 978-0-544-30710-0 A dark comedy follows the misadventures of a boy trying to get rid of the devil that has moved into his basement.

Yes, Max starts the book by doing something bad: He steals a silly toy for his sick mom. Then he indulges his paleontology obsession by digging a hole on the hill that looms over his town, only to open a huge, apparently bottomless crater. Sadly, it seems that Max’s decision to embrace the criminal life is enough to bring the powers of hell down upon his head—or rather, into his basement. Upon returning home from his excavation efforts, he finds an actual devil named Burg happily snacking on junk food and declaring himself a permanent resident in Max’s home. Seeing a possible advantage in his new supernatural housemate, Max makes a deal: The constantly wisecracking Burg will cure his mom’s critical heart disease if he can find Burg a free mansion with a hot tub. Lore, a girl who understands Max’s dilemma only too well, teams up with him to try to appease Burg before he starts killing people. Damico, who explored the lives of teenage grim reapers in her Croak trilogy, writes with wry wit and constant dark humor. She mixes in a bit of possible romance, as Max wonders if he has any chance with the vastly different Lore, also to great comic effect.

Hilarious—all the way through. (Fantasy. 12-18)

CREATURES OF THE NIGHT

de la Bédoyère, Camilla Firefly (96 pp.) $9.95 paper | Nov. 1, 2014 978-1-77085-459-8

A slickly produced if arbitrarily ordered gallery of nocturnal wildlife, from leopards to the giant desert hairy scorpion, featuring dozens of close-up portraits and quick, easily graspable facts.

Sharply printed on coated paper against, usually, a black background and often angled to face viewers, the dominant central photograph or photorealistically rendered image on each spread creates an immediate visual impact with each turn of the page. Smaller surrounding photos focus on physical or behavioral highlights or introduce related creatures.

Captions and comments tucked amid the images supply a browser-friendly mix of standard-issue descriptions and mustknow observations. Among the latter: Vampire bats slurp and pee at the same time, owl “eyeballs” (sic) are tube-shaped, and railroad worms “survive by biting the heads off millipedes and sucking out the liquid from inside them!” Good stuff! The simultaneously published Monsters of the Deep offers similar infotainment with a marine cast that includes ratfish, snipe 132

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STOLEN

de la Cruz, Melissa; Johnston, Michael Putnam (304 pp.) $17.99 | Nov. 18, 2014 978-0-399-25755-1 Series: Heart of Dread, 2 Drakonrydder Nat and her guy-forhire Wes are at it again.

In a dystopian world destroyed ages ago by global warming, heroine Nat Kestral fought like hell to reach an Edenic place called Blue (Frozen, 2013). This sequel finds her there, training with white-haired, handsome Faix, messenger to the queen of Vallonis, and longing for her lost love, Wes, who’s found enough trouble of his own in a quest to find his long-lost sister. Readers are plunged right in the middle of the action from the first page, and the story unfolds in alternating chapters told from each character’s perspective. Readers will definitely need to review the first installment of the series to catch themselves up, and this one is chock-full of fantasy-novel-esque character and place names that may have them wishing for a dramatis personae or a map. The novel takes off with a start-and-stop sensibility, but the authors do provide the back story eventually (and cleverly), and the plot takes off from there. Everything feels mostly real, with the exception of Nat’s dark phase in the first part, which renders her more a cheesy Bella (“an artist unable to paint; a poet unable to write”) than the fierce fighter she is.

A sputtering start leads to an action-packed adventure for patient fans. (Dystopian romance. 14-18)

THE PRINCESS SPY

Dickerson, Melanie Zondervan (304 pp.) $12.99 paper | Nov. 1, 2014 978-0-310-73098-9 Lady Margaretha proves her mettle and her worth to the lord of her dreams in this romance set in Western Europe in 1413.

Despite a title and cover art screaming, “Read me, girls!” the prologue seems determined to lure in some male readers, as Colin witnesses the death of his friend John and reflects that he pressed John into a shared journey of vengeance against “the man who had murdered Philippa. But the heinous deed had filled Colin with outraged justice. Philippa had been his sister’s closest friend and had not deserved such a fate.” After Colin is beaten severely and left for dead, the story moves on to kirkus.com

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“…this is not a book for research; it’s a display. There are enormous beaks and splendiferous tails, bright colors in skin and feathers, and surprisingly different feet.” from weird birds

18-year-old Margaretha, whose sole fault is being too talkative.

She is currently being wooed by the foppish Lord Claybrook. Is he merely boring, or do his ridiculous garments hide the heart of a blackguard? The story is not intentionally tongue-in-cheek, but readers need make no effort in order to distinguish “good” characters from “bad” or noble-born physical appearances from lower-born. There is one chance for reflection, in a passage about the difference between vengeance and justice. Otherwise, there are pages of action scenes, wild plot twists and juicy almost-kissing moments, increasingly interjected with oddly post-Reformation prayers from Colin and Margaretha. Intentional humor does appear when Margaretha shows surprising fighting skill with ordinary household objects.

Light reading for those who like romantic medieval romps and who enjoy or easily tolerate Christian prayers and references. (Historical fiction. 12-16)

REBELS BY ACCIDENT

Dunn, Patricia Sourcebooks Fire (320 pp.) $9.99 paper | Dec. 2, 2014 978-1-4926-0138-8

An American teen visiting her Egyptian grandmother in Cairo witnesses the beginnings of the Arab Spring movement.

After being caught at a wild high school party, Mariam and her best friend, Deanna, are sent to spend the remaining five months of the school year with her conservative grandmother in Egypt. Mariam dreads her grandmother’s legendary strictness: “[F]rom the stories my baba [father] has told me...I would probably have more freedom in jail.” But Deanna, who “loves anything Egyptian,” immediately embraces the adventure. (Deanna’s tastes run toward romance novels featuring stereotypical illustrations of “pseudo-Arab lover boy[s]” on the covers.) Mariam’s initial mockery of her friend’s books later becomes ironic when the plot begins to center more heavily on romantic entanglements than the rebellion against President Hosni Mubarak. By the end of the teens’ stay in Egypt (which ends up being a mere five days), both girls have found boyfriends for themselves and a love match for the grandmother. The timeline makes the many musings on true love more mawkish than believable. Meanwhile, there are so few scenes about the demonstrations in Tahrir Square or meaningful conversations about the political landscape that readers will develop little sense of the historical significance of the real Egyptian rebellion.

This novel may mean well, but it fails to find a balance between romance and the reality of regime change. (Historical fiction. 12-14)

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WEIRD BIRDS

Earley, Chris Firefly (64 pp.) $19.95 | Nov. 1, 2014 978-1-77085-441-3 An album of captioned photographs of nearly 60 exotic birds offers dramatic evidence of astonishing diversity in the avian word.

The images are striking, with the bird (or its head) shown against a stark white background. From the black skimmer to the vulturine guineafowl, they are presented by common name, but Latin names are also given. Each illustration is accompanied by a paragraph about ways in which the bird is particularly bizarre.

Sometimes the text indicates where it might be found, in a general way—Africa, Central and South America, in rain forests—and sometimes it mentions habitat or eating habits, size or eggs. But this is not a book for research; it’s a display. There are enormous beaks and splendiferous tails, bright colors in skin and feathers, and surprisingly different feet. The southern ground hornbill has remarkable eyelashes; penguins excrete excess salt through their nostrils; the palm cockatoo makes a drumstick from a branch and bangs it against a hollow tree to attract a mate. These pictures, from stock photo collections, are attributed (photographer and source) in agate type on the verso. Unfortunately, the author, an interpretive biologist, provides no sources for his information nor suggestions for further exploration. A similar, simultaneously publishing collection, Weird Frogs, uses a similar approach.

A browser’s delight. (index) (Informational picture book.

7-12) (Weird Frogs: 978-1-77085-442-0)

PERFECT COUPLE

Echols, Jennifer Simon Pulse/Simon & Schuster (320 pp.) $17.99 | Jan. 13, 2015 978-1-4424-7449-9 Series: Superlatives, 2 Harper, the official yearbook photographer, has a boyfriend but secretly crushes on Brody, the drop-dead-handsome football star. What happens when a silly student poll teams them up as the “Perfect Couple That Never Was”?

True, her romance with Kennedy hasn’t been going well.

Kennedy picks fights with her just before they have dates, and he pushes her around in his job as yearbook editor. Brody isn’t single either, and he can’t seem to keep his hands off his girlfriend in public. But Harper has a job to do, and one of her assignments is to photograph the “Superlatives,” couples chosen by the students in secret ballots. And even though Brody has a girlfriend, he comes on to her—and she responds. When she has a furious fight with a jealous Kennedy in front of a roomful of their friends, things really go awry. Can she have a real relationship with Brody after all—or does he only care about her looks, now that she’s ditched her glasses and started wearing attractive clothes? Meanwhile, |

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“The story...broadens the spectrum of books aimed at young urban boys of color.” from skateboard party

her parents are in the middle of a nasty divorce, and her grandfather behaves like a hermit. Echols focuses on Harper’s inner turmoil as she pens a better-than-average high school romance caper.

She has fun highlighting many of Harper’s mistakes, but she also gives secondary characters unexpected complexity.

It adds up to fairly typical adolescent angst with a bit of insight on top. (Romance. 12-16)

EVA’S TREETOP FESTIVAL

Elliott, Rebecca Illus. by Elliott, Rebecca Branches/Scholastic (80 pp.) $15.99 | $4.99 paper | $4.99 e-book Jan. 6, 2015 978-0-545-68363-0 978-0-545-68362-3 paper 978-0-545-68378-4 e-book Series: Owl Diaries, 1 Eva the owl chronicles 11 days in her life in the first in the Owl Diaries series for emerging readers.

Eva has received a new diary and uses it to record the details of her life, along with sunny drawings and photographs that make her diary more like a scrapbook. In between daily entries, she comes up with the idea of having a big festival at her school. Her teacher, Mrs. Featherbottom, thinks it’s a great idea but warns Eva to share the work with her classmates—which readers might already have inferred will be a challenge. When her rival, Sue Clawson, offers help, Eva stubbornly takes on most of the responsibilities herself. Bright and colorful digital illustrations, large type, frequent speech bubbles and a familiar story make this accessible to emerging readers. The 11 chapters and substantial number of pages will help these readers feel accomplished. Some of the wordplay (“owlementary,” “Winglish”) and invented owlspeak (“flaperrific,” “flap-tastic”) might trip up the intended audience, but they also make the story memorable. It’s hard not to think that if Eva spent more time getting ready for the festival and less time writing in her diary, she might not end up in the weeds—but then there would be no story, of course.

New readers need lots of choices, and this series promises to fill a niche for them. Keep flapping, Eva! (Fantasy. 5-8)

SKATEBOARD PARTY

English, Karen Illus. by Freeman, Laura HMH Books (128 pp.) $14.99 | Dec. 2, 2014 978-0-544-28306-0 Series: Carver Chronicles, 2 Richard dreams of landing the perfect flat-ground Ollie, but before he can attempt the daring skateboard feat, he must recover from an earlier trick that he played on his parents by concealing a teacher’s note informing his parents of lackluster effort.

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Ms. Shelby-Ortiz knows that Richard can do better, but Richard just doesn’t want to think about it, so he leaves her note buried in his backpack. Eventually, of course, the truth comes out, and there are consequences, chief among them missing the birthday party where he plans to show off his trick. English’s longtime collaborator Freeman (the companion Nikki & Deja series) contributes illustrations throughout, often representing critical moments in the story. One memorably depicts Richard struggling with the spelling of q-u-o-t-i-e-n-t in a crucial spelling test in which perfection stands between him and the skate park. While it’s clear from the illustrations that Richard and his family are African-American, the text is largely free of cultural signifiers. The story reads much more like an all-American tale of a growing family amid middle-class suburban life than it does of a black middle-class family raising four black boys in the suburbs—an approach that broadens the spectrum of books aimed at young urban boys of color. Readers won’t find clear racial depictions, but they’ll still giggle at the familial mischief.

A welcome series addition that emphasizes familiarity instead of difference and treats its message with an affectionately light hand. (Fiction. 6-10)

PLAYLIST FOR THE DEAD

Falkoff, Michelle HarperTeen (288 pp.) $17.99 | $10.99 e-book | Jan. 27, 2015 978-0-06-231052-1 978-0-06-231052-1 e-book When his best friend leaves behind a mysterious playlist in lieu of a proper suicide note, Sam is left with dozens of questions and only a handful of songs as clues.

Hayden and Sam have been thick as thieves since they were 8, but the pressures of high school have been pushing them apart bit by bit for the last few months.

After a party turns disastrous, the two leave on the worst of terms, and Sam finds Hayden’s body in the morning with an empty bottle each of vodka and Valium. He also finds a playlist and a note with just one sentence: “For Sam....Listen and you’ll understand.” As Sam deals with his only friend’s death, a mysterious girl come out of the woodwork offering condolences and a different account of Hayden’s personality. As Sam discovers more and more about his friend, he discovers a bit more about his own sense of identity as well. It’s a nice premise with some truly powerful moments, but there is a serious overreliance on exposition-heavy dialogue. These conversations are lined up one after another so often it almost becomes comical. A few emotional dead ends are met as well, making for an ambitious book that doesn’t quite stick any of the landings. The highs of the journey are so high that it’s almost forgivable that the book’s central mystery ends up being a bust.

A mixed bag that delights slightly more than disappoints. (Fiction. 12-16)

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I WAS HERE

Forman, Gayle Viking (288 pp.) $18.99 | Jan. 27, 2015 978-0-451-47147-5 Part tautly paced mystery, part psychological study of suicide and its aftereffects.

When Cody’s best friend, Meg, kills herself by downing cleaning fluid in a motel room, she tidily leaves behind a tip for the maid and time-delayed emails for Cody, her parents and the police. Cody’s devastated: After all, she and Meg were inseparable since kindergarten. That is, they were close until talented Meg escaped their dead-end town to attend college on a fellowship while Cody stayed behind. But when Cody travels to Meg’s college town to pack up what’s left of Meg’s life, she’s startled by how much doesn’t make sense: Why would someone so full of promise and life choose death?

How much did Meg’s housemates know about her fateful decision? And why does Meg have an encrypted file on her computer? Seeking to justify the picture of the friend she thought she knew with the one she’s piecing together, Cody faces questions about their friendship, along with a growing attraction for Ben, the boy she believes broke Meg’s heart. Forman’s characters are all too human: Cody’s willingness to ignore what doesn’t fit her picture of Meg as she struggles to come to terms with her sadness and guilt rings true of those left behind to face the tragedy of suicide.

An engrossing and provocative look at the devastating finality of suicide, survivor’s guilt, the complicated nature of responsibility and even the role of the Internet in lifeand-death decisions. (Fiction. 14 & up)

BOTH OF ME

Friesen, Jonathan Blink (272 pp.) $16.99 | Dec. 23, 2014 978-0-310-73188-7 A girl with a mysterious past embarks on a journey across America to save a friend and find herself.

Haunted by a family tragedy she feels responsible for, 18-year-old Clara has traveled the world but can’t leave her past behind. This seems especially true when, on a flight to Minneapolis, she sits next to “an interesting bloke” named Elias Phinn, who seems to know her life, including details of the tragedy—her Great Undoing—she has never revealed to anyone. Clara follows Elias to his home, an inn “populated with the mad and deranged.” It turns out that Elias is suffering from dissociative identity disorder: There are two Eliases, the “real,” lucid one and the mentally ill one inhabiting an imaginary world that he calls Salem—and the paranoid one seems to be taking over, unless “normal” Elias can figure out how to destroy the |

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evil that comes from a mysterious “Keeper” at a lighthouse.

Friesen’s writing is at times stunning, neatly adept at capturing the “terror of loose footing” that affects both Elias and Clara and creating an unease in readers as well. The sheer weirdness of Elias’ alternative world will intrigue readers, and after Elias and Clara’s phantasmagoric road trip following stars and myths, those readers will appreciate a grizzled old Mainer’s matter-offact story that neatly explains everything.

A haunting tale for teens with a taste for the bizarre.

(Fiction. 14-18)

ALISTAIR GRIM’S ODDITORIUM

Funaro, Gregory Disney-Hyperion (432 pp.) $16.99 | Jan. 6, 2015 978-1-4847-0006-8 Series: Odditorium, 1

Victorian-era adventure with a supernatural stock of magical and mythical players.

Grubb (“no first or last name”) was a doorstep drop-off adopted by Mr. and Mrs. Smears. With the death of compassionate Mrs. Smears, he is left in the care of Mr. Smears, a brutish chimney sweep. Grubb is forced to sweep chimneys for no pay while nasty Mr. Smears broods over beer.

After a mishap involving soot and a horrid hotelier, Grubb hides in the trunk of a parting guest to avoid a beating. The guest is Alistair Grim, and when Grubb exits the trunk, he is in the titular Odditorium, a collective of “Odditoria” (among them a talking watch and a trickster banshee). Grubb is invited to work for Grim under the proviso that he won’t reveal magical secrets, but when he unwittingly breaks that cardinal rule, he attracts Grim’s nemesis. Battles, kidnapping and sorcery ensue.

The series opener’s Anglophile charm is occasionally muddied with an abundance of character introductions. To navigate this bevy of names and species, there is a character list and glossary.

Black-and-white illustrations somewhere between daguerreotype and manga supplement the vivid textual imagery. Grubb’s cheat-to-the-audience moments at either end of the story are frustrating, if widely spaced (“My apologies, but I’m afraid you’ll have to take my word”).

Verne-ian fantasy and reversal of fortune à la Dickens will lure readers into this good-vs.-evil series debut. (Fantasy. 10-13)

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“Neugebauer’s photographs (taken over many years of visits) are striking and beautifully reproduced.” from chimpanzee children of gombe

HOW TO GROW A FRIEND

without any impact on the book as a whole, expect for the ultimate, predictable closing scene that shows the child tuckered out after his busy day and fast asleep in a chair. Ultimately, Good and Krosoczka’s collaboration seems to serve more as a validation for adult perceptions of toddler behavior than it acts as a story for actual toddlers to enjoy.

Not a must. read. book. (Picture book. 2-4)

Gillingham, Sara Illus. by Gillingham, Sara Random House (40 pp.) $16.99 | $19.99 PLB | Jan. 6, 2015 978-0-385-37669-3 978-0-375-97325-3 PLB This attractive picture book for the very young from accomplished illustrator and debut author Gillingham explores a thoughtful analogy between gardening and friendship.

The parallels between growing things and making new friends are illustrated with simple instructions, matched with Gillingham’s pastel-shaded woodcut-and-collaged illustrations.

Just like seeds and plants, friendships need to be sown, tended and cultivated. “A friend needs water... / warm sunshine... // and space to bloom.” It is a two-way process: “To grow a friend, talk / and listen”; “Good friends stand by each other in rain / or shine.”

With friendships, as with flowers, things can go wrong: “Sometimes a friend bugs you.” (Bugs literally buzz around their heads on a page where the friends are wrestling for control of a potted plant.) But “[t]o grow a friend, / chase the bugs away together!”

The girl finds a solution to their argument by giving the boy a ride in a wheelbarrow. A subtly diverse selection of kids and adults are portrayed enjoying one another’s company and working together to cultivate their gardens. Children, flowers, birds, trees and seasons are skillfully illustrated using multicolored patterns and shapes that will have considerable visual appeal for preschoolers.

The slightly didactic message of tolerance and inclusiveness is made palatable by the gardening analogy, and this book will encourage young friendships to bloom. (Picture book. 2-4)

MUST. PUSH. BUTTONS!

Good, Jason Illus. by Krosoczka, Jarrett J. Bloomsbury (32 pp.) $16.99 | Jan. 6, 2015 978-1-61963-095-6

A rambunctious child tries to find outlets for his surfeit of energy.

As the title implies, this little boy is into everything: Daddy’s phone, Mommy’s shoes, the kitchen appliances—you name it, he’ll fuss with it. Written in first person, Good’s text ends up coming across more like an adult’s impression of a busy child than it does the voice of a little one, and it lacks the structure necessary to deliver a complete story. Instead, the book delivers a familiar character study of the into-everything toddler. Krosoczka’s digitally assembled, multimedia art attempts to capture the protagonist’s high energy with multiple scenes showing him in midaction as he explores the world around him at a frantic pace, but the illustrations end up being largely redundant to rather than expansive of the text. Furthermore, the sequence of events has no apparent order—spreads could be rearranged 136

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CHIMPANZEE CHILDREN OF GOMBE

Goodall, Jane Photos by Neugebauer, Michael Minedition (64 pp.) $19.99 | Dec. 1, 2014 978-988-8240-83-8

An album of photographs of young chimpanzees from the families the famed naturalist has studied over 60 years in the now-protected area of Tanzania called Gombe National Park.

Goodall herself narrates this invitation to young readers to spend a day observing chimpanzee children. Her love for the area comes through in her presentation. She explains that her imagined day includes photos taken over many years and features several different chimp families. She makes a point of showing similarities between their behavior and our own— mothers carrying, feeding and nurturing their babies, children exploring and playing. One spread shows young Tanzanian children and chimps in similar poses—sucking a finger, laughing, eating. Along the way, the naturalist includes facts about chimp daily life and introduces other animals in the park, including baboons and red colobus monkeys. Neugebauer’s photographs (taken over many years of visits) are striking and beautifully reproduced. Many are close-ups, showing recognizable individuals. Some pictures may surprise: One chimp shakes a dry gourd like a rattle; another holds hands with a baboon. Others entertain. One spread shows Goodall herself, perhaps thinking about her own mother or perhaps just watching a chimp mother cuddling her baby. Both have the same warm smile.

An irresistible replacement for the collaborators’ The Chimpanzee Family Book (1989), now out of print. (Informational picture book. 5-10)

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BIG BAD DETECTIVE AGENCY

Hale, Bruce Illus. by Hale, Bruce Scholastic (128 pp.) $15.99 | $4.99 paper | $15.99 e-book Jan. 27, 2015 978-0-545-66537-7 978-0-545-66538-4 paper 978-0-545-74728-8 e-book

Everyone knows the Big Bad Wolf is...well bad, right?

When the Three Little Pigs’ houses are trashed, who in Fairylandia is the prime suspect? It’s Wolfgang, the Big Bad Wolf (though don’t call him that; he’s trying to reform—he likes gardening these days). Capt. Kreplach, captain of Prince Tyrone’s guard, gives Wolfgang until sundown to prove his innocence... despite the total absence of evidence of his guilt beyond his reputation. To avoid a lifetime diet of porridge in the prince’s dungeon, Wolfgang starts investigating. When he arrives at Dieter Pig’s house of bricks, Wolfgang finds it cleaned of all evidence by the Little Pigs’ mother. (Incidentally, the “little pigs” are not particularly little, and they run the successful PorkerBuilt construction company.) His investigation techniques earn him a mop in the face from said mother. No one in Fairylandia is likely to treat him as other than suspect No.1...until Ferkel Pig, the Three Little Pigs’ eager little brother, offers to assist. The two reluctant comrades set out across Fairylandia, but will they find the actual culprit in time? Hale, author/illustrator of the successful, Edgar-nominated Chet Gecko series, clearly has a lot of fun with this dip into fairy tales for his new series of humorous mysteries. A few of the jokes might fly over the heads of the target audience, but that just makes this a great read-together chapter book.

Funny and flip, like Saturday morning cartoons. (Fantasy/mystery. 6-9)

THE BOOK OF STORMS

Hatfield, Ruth Henry Holt (368 pp.) $16.99 | Jan. 17, 2015 978-0-8050-9998-0 Series: Book of Storms, 1

Confident storytelling lays a solid foundation for Book 1 of this original middle-grade fantasy trilogy.

Eleven-year-old Danny wakes up one morning after a tumultuous thunderstorm to find his parents gone and the giant sycamore in his backyard destroyed by lightning. Poking around the remains of the tree, he discovers a stick that, when held, allows him to communicate with all of the natural world—plants, animals, insects; even rivers and storms. When his parents—storm-obsessed ever since the storm-related death of their first child, a sister Danny never knew—do not return by the following morning, |

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he sets off to find them. As Danny searches for his parents, Sammael is searching for Danny, as the stick, a taro, is powerful magic that he wants for himself. Sammael is an otherworldly entity who is part sandman—planting dreams into people as they sleep—and part devil, making deals in exchange for souls (souls that, in wonderful narrative cohesion, transmute to grains of sand after death). Complex and morally nuanced, Hatfield’s story harkens back to European and ancient Greek mythology in its anthropomorphizing of dreams and fears (Death, a silverhaired woman with red eyes, plays a key role) and its portrayal of nature as character rather than setting.

A powerfully conceived and executed story that adds a wholly original element to the fantasy genre. (Fantasy. 10-13)

WAITING FOR UNICORNS

Hautala, Beth Philomel (256 pp.) $16.99 | Jan. 22, 2015 978-0-525-42631-8

During a summer spent in the Artic, 12-year-old Talia McQuinn experiences the healing power of place and of stories.

Awash in loneliness and grief following her mother’s death, Talia is uprooted to Churchill, Manitoba, for three months while her father does whale research. Already feeling a brokenness and a “Mom-sized space” between her father and herself, she stays with an Inuit woman while her father is gone for weeks awaiting the ice-out and the belugas’ arrival. Talia’s memories center on the stories her mother loved and shared; they help her feel whole. She keeps a jar of wishes scrawled on paper.

The first is, “I wish there was no more cancer.” Slowly, with the help of a few new friends, a budding romance and the gift of stories, Talia emerges from her despair to a realization that while big wishes may not come true, small wishes are happening all around her. She finds forgiveness and rediscovers hope. Debut author Hautala’s writing in this first-person narrative is lyrical and evocative; her descriptions of the landscape are vivid. Talia, who knows much about being left and leaving, describes it thus: “[w]atching things slip away from you until your insides ache and everything feels backwards.”

Written by an author to watch, this quiet story of loss and healing will appeal to thoughtful readers. (Fiction. 10-14)

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WHERE BEAR?

Henn, Sophy Illus. by Henn, Sophy Philomel (32 pp.) $16.99 | Jan. 2, 2015 978-0-399-17158-1 The eternal quandaries of friendships between animals and children are given a new twist in this debut picture book by British artist Henn.

When this polar bear cub is small, living with the boy is no problem. As soon as he starts to grow, his natural bear nature starts to assert itself. He eats all the food, swamps the duck pond and roars in an anti-social manner. The boy realizes his pet is “just too big and bearish to be living in a house.” In an entertainingly repetitive phrase, the titular dilemma—“Then where, bear?”—is repeated on each spread, accompanied by illustrations showing the impossibility of each situation. He is too big to fit in the toyshop, too uncomfortable in the zoo; the circus, the woods, caves and the jungle are too scary for this sweet and fuzzy polar bear. A taste of an ice pop from the fridge gives them an idea. It’s off to the Arctic, where the bear feels quite at home in the snow. Everyone is happy, and the two friends still stay in touch, quaintly “chit-chattering on the phone all the time.” Boy and bear are depicted in comfortable vignettes; bold swashes of crayon overlay plain and textured backgrounds in a palette of red, gray, pink and lime. Thick, fuzzy gray lines describe the bear’s friendly bulk; the boy wears a complementary black-andwhite–striped T-shirt.

This gentle tale about friendship and home will give early readers and their grown-ups plenty of food for discussion. (Picture book. 2-5)

SNOWMAN’S STORY

Hillenbrand, Will Illus. by Hillenbrand, Will Two Lions (32 pp.) $16.99 | Nov. 18, 2014 978-1-4778-4787-9

With echoes of “Frosty the Snowman” in the background, a snowman’s storybook within this wordless book delivers a comic wintertime romp.

Woodland creatures build a snowman, giving him a green book as a finishing touch. This addition comes right after a windswept top hat lands on his head, vivifying him à la Frosty.

Hidden inside is a rabbit (it is a magic hat, after all); attentive readers will have seen the hat first on frontmatter pages and then with the bunny in the double-page spreads before the early ones devoted to the snowman’s construction. The snowman reads his book aloud to the animals, with the rabbit surreptitiously listening in, its ears poking out of the top of the hat.

When the others all drift off to sleep, the bunny emerges and steals away with the book. A chase ensues across snowy terrain and through a series of pages (perhaps a few too many for good 138

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pacing) replete with comic-style panels. When the animals and snowman confront the rabbit in its tree-hollow home, its motivation for book thievery is revealed: This bunny has a family and wishes to share the story with its children. All’s well that ends well, and the animals convene (safely outside and away from the rabbit family’s crackling fireplace) to read together.

A cozy read for bibliophiles. (Picture book. 3- 6)

ROCKET’S 100TH DAY OF SCHOOL

Hills, Tad Illus. by Hills, Tad Random House (32 pp.) $12.99 | Dec. 23, 2014 978-0-385-39095-8 Series: Rocket

Rocket, the dog of reading fame, spends the first few months of school collecting 100 “special things,” but when the 100th day of school finally arrives, five are missing.

Rocket’s items are varied and reflect his friends, the changing season and his own interests: acorns, the letters of the alphabet, a few of Owl’s feathers, heart-shaped rocks, sticks shaped like numbers, pine cones, pencils, etc. Bella the squirrel kindly allows Rocket to stow all these items in her hole in a tree. But when he comes to collect them again, five things are missing... five acorns. The squirrel tries to avoid questions about the missing acorns. “The what?...Acorns?” In a hysterical double-page spread that beautifully captures the confession of a compulsion, the squirrel, head flung back, paws thrown wide, shouts, “YES! I ATE THEM!...I LOVE ACORNS SO MUCH!” A page turn shows a sad Rocket and a remorseful Bella. But the clever dog is not stymied for long. Luckily, he has four old friends and a new (and forgiven) friend in Bella, making the requisite 100. A large font, short sentences and white background behind large, simple illustrations help readers decode words, just like their favorite reading dog.

Rocket’s fans will enjoy practicing their skills and their own countdowns to (and collections for) Day 100. (Early reader. 5-8)

THE DINNER THAT COOKED ITSELF

Hsyu, J.C. Illus. by Pak, Kenard Flying Eye Books (32 pp.) $17.95 | Nov. 11, 2014 978-1-909263-41-3 A retelling of an old Chinese folk tale emphasizes the goodness of its protagonist.

Young Tuan was orphaned as a little boy and raised by kindly neighbors who, when he is old enough, hire a matchmaker for him. The first match is no good, as their zodiacal symbols clash; kirkus.com

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“…Aurora and Niklaas’ very Lizzy and Darcy–esque relationship, as well as their growing bond, is entirely believable….” from princess of thorns

the second founders on symbolic disagreement between their name characters. The third looks promising symbolically, but Tuan is just “too poor for her parents to approve.” Gathering cabbages by moonlight, Tuan spots a large snail and brings it home, keeping it in a jar and feeding it cabbage leaves. Over each of the next several days, Tuan arrives home to find his table set with a delicious dinner on it. Curious, he comes home early the next evening to discover a beautiful woman emerging from the snail’s jar; sent by the Lord of Heaven to look after him until he marries, she must now leave as she may not be gazed upon by mortals—but she leaves her shell behind, and it never runs out of rice. Hsyu’s retelling has a folkloric simplicity, planting just enough details to ground readers in the traditional tale.

Pak’s mixed-media illustrations evoke a misty, long-ago agrarian China, his expressive, angular faces contrasting pleasingly with fluid, lovingly created backdrops. Although there is a concluding note on Chinese calligraphy, there is nothing to source the story itself.

A breath of fresh air in its beauty and simplicity. (Picture book/folk tale. 3- 7)

PRINCESS OF THORNS

Jay, Stacey Delacorte (400 pp.) $17.99 | $10.99 e-book | $20.99 PLB Dec. 9, 2014 978-0-385-74322-8 978-0-307-98143-1 e-book 978-0-375-99101-1 PLB Exiled warrior-princess Aurora, the Sleeping Beauty’s daughter, attempts to save her brother and reclaim her throne.

Fairy-blessed by her dying mother with strength, 17-yearold Princess Aurora hopes to raise an army to free her brother, Jor, from evil ogre queen Ekeeta. Arrogant, crass and beautiful Prince Niklaas is cursed to become a swan on his 18th birthday unless he marries a princess. Disguised as a boy and calling herself Ror, Aurora is disgusted by Niklaas, but when he promises to help her find an army in exchange for an introduction to “his sister,” Ror agrees. While their journey occurs over the span of several days, Aurora and Niklaas’ very Lizzy and Darcy–esque relationship, as well as their growing bond, is entirely believable given the intensity of their experiences. When secrets are finally revealed, their sexual tension practically sizzles, but it’s refreshingly realistic that trust and forgiveness take time. Furthermore, things aren’t as straightforward as they’d seem, as Aurora’s mother’s blessing also came with a curse. The conclusion may come a bit too easy for some, and discerning readers may be left with multiple questions.

Those able to overlook the incomplete worldbuilding will find the compelling, fully fleshed romance and gems of truth scattered throughout the story satisfying and worth the effort. (Fantasy. 14 & up)

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HISSY FITZ

Jennings, Patrick Illus. by Austin, Michael Allen Egmont USA (128 pp.) $14.99 | $14.99 e-book | Jan. 6, 2015 978-1-60684-596-7 978-1-60684-597-4 e-book Can’t a kitty catch a break for a nap?

Not in the Fitz house.

Hissy is a simple cat. He wants his food, he wants clean water, and he wants some peace and quiet for a nap. Georgie, his 8-year-old human girl, is too loving; she often elicits a hiss for waking Hissy from his important naps. Her father is a carpenter, so he earns hisses for making too much noise. But the real problem is Zeb, Georgie’s untamed 3-year-old brother. Zeb is constantly noisy and constantly chasing Hissy. Zeb’s twin, Abe, is perfectly tamed and probably receives the fewest hisses. Sometimes Hissy can catch a quick snooze at his friend Igloo’s house, but only if the window or door is left open. Hissy concludes that wherever you find a human, you find noise. He escapes into the night for a nap, but cats are nocturnal, and he always has trouble sleeping at night. Igloo organizes a soccer match to tire him out; maybe if he snuggles with Georgie, Hissy will finally get some shuteye...but it’s only a few hours until dawn....Jennings, author of the popular Guinea Dog series, tackles the feline mind with fair results. Narrator Hissy is a hard cat to like, and his annoyance with his humans can backfire. The soccer match in an otherwise realistic tale feels a bit out of place, but cat lovers will see their feline friends in Hissy (especially if those felines can be a bit hissy at times).

Not Jennings’ best, but worth it for cat fans. (Fiction.

7-10)

SEARCHING FOR SUPER

Jensen, Marion Harper/HarperCollins (256 pp.) $14.99 | $9.99 e-book | Jan. 20, 2015 978-0-06-220958-0 978-0-06-220960-3 e-book Deprived of superpowers in the previous episode (Almost Super, 2014), can the Bailey and Johnson clans put aside their squabbles to tackle their common nemesis, the Joneses?

Determined to prove that they have the mettle to join their parents and relatives in fighting crime, 13-year-old Rafter Bailey, his little brother, Benny, and erstwhile rival Juanita Johnson (definitely the brains of the trio) kick off their own search for the Joneses’ secret hideout. Little do they suspect that those clever villains have planted a ringer in their very midst. Sabotage and other distractions ensue, until Juanita’s sudden disappearance sharpens not only the urgency of the search, but also Rafter’s guilt for being a poor friend. The kidnapping turns out |

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INTERVIEWS & PROFILES

Oliver Jeffers

Not paying attention to trends has allowed the kids’ writer to set them

By Gordon West

Unbridled creativity in publishing is nothing but an optimistic notion. Darling characters, plots and illustrated spreads are not only reined in, they’re killed, shredded, pummeled, resuscitated and reshaped for publication. Keen eyes, ears and a preternatural sense of audience constantly create and answer bookshelf trends. No more vampires! Nix the collage books! Bring me a cross-cultural supernatural romance set in Civil War–era Georgia!

In tracking fluctuating trends over the last several years, I’ve witnessed consistent discouragement from agents, editors and art directors to proposals of rhyming manuscripts or picture books showcasing the alphabet.

Fortunately, Oliver Jeffers hasn’t been paying attention. His latest picture book, Once Upon an Alphabet, features both rhymes and those 26 letters. When I 140

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speak to him on the phone, he is in the midst of a European tour for his fine art endeavors and laughs when I ask if his book was an act of exquisite defiance.

“Clearly, I wasn’t listening to anyone’s advice on this one,” says Jeffers. “I don’t have my finger that firmly on the pulse of what’s happening. Which I’m a little ashamed of and which also might be a blessing in disguise, sometimes, because I can concentrate on what I’m doing and what I want to do rather than being very aware of what trends and flows and what people want to see and what people don’t want to see.”

He regrets that he might be missing out on the creation of some great books by not being more trend-attentive. However, with his picture book How to Catch a Star still going strong after 10 years and The Day the Crayons Quit (written by Drew Daywalt and illustrated by Jeffers) a New York Times best-seller, he has still produced a cornucopia of prolific work without taking an industry pulse.

Why start now?

Once Upon an Alphabet pairs loose and lively illustrations with sometimes-sweet, often witty and comical short stories specific to each letter of the alphabet.

A guard, a gorilla and a glacier populate G’s spreads, and R reveals how the recalcitrance of rain clouds ruins robots. But it isn’t all fun and games when (spoiler alert!) a determined little cup breaks between B and D. With 26 opportunities for singular stories, there were bound to be certain letters who lent themselves more easily to storytelling than others.

“There are three or four that never changed. Right from the first idea and the first crack, they came fully formed,” says Jeffers. “Like the first story, A, the astronaut with the fear of heights, and Owl and the Octopus, they were there in the very first draft. But pretkirkus.com

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ty much every other letter got an overhaul at some point or another.”

Owl and Octopus, perhaps mostly because of their mismatched appeal, are automatically charismatic and even make repeat appearances in other stories. (“They search for problems. They solve them. They move on,” Jeffers says.) They undertake a mission to find a misinformed sea cucumber in S, and they assist Xavier, who has been robbed in X. A problem-solving pair comprised of tentacles and feathers and executed à la Jeffers sounds like a duo that should receive star treatment in their own stand-alone book.

“That’s something that I haven’t ruled out, because they would lend themselves quite easily to an independent story,” says Jeffers. “Let’s just say that the idea has occurred to me as well, and I’m going to experiment with it and see how it works.”

In September, an interactive installation of Jeffers’ work opened at the Discover Children’s Story Centre in London. I mention that the Centre’s Interim Chief Executive, Sarah Dance, said that Jeffers’ books capture the themes of loneliness and friendship and ask if he agrees with that summation.

“There are no themes that I consciously go toward,” says Jeffers. “It’s interesting because it came up in an early interview in my career. Someone asked, ‘Do you decide on the moral you want your book to have first or do you decide on the story and try to insert the moral afterward?’ And I thought, ‘Well, the answer to that question is neither.’ I just try to tell good stories, and the morals seem to come quite naturally.”

Jeffers is from Belfast, Northern Ireland, but has been living in New York City for eight years and in Brooklyn for five of those. In that time, he has written and illustrated a number of picture books and continued his fine art endeavors (he created the album cover for the EP of U2’s song about Nelson Mandela, a project that he calls “an incredible honor”), so clearly the guy is pretty busy. Is Brooklyn the catalyst for all that productivity?

“I think it’s the people,” says Jeffers. “I think New York City, unlike any other city in the world, is filled with people who go there who want to accomplish.

So there’s a drive and a palpable energy about the place that are inspiring and drive you forward. It’s an incredibly inspirational place to be. And I bounce well off of other people. I don’t think anyone makes |

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art in a bubble, and I think it’s a very positive thing to share your ideas and share your works and the way in which you work with other people.”

But still, he can’t expect too much from this book.

Sure, it’s beautiful; sure, the palette somehow harmonizes neon orange, indigo, a steely turquoise and ochre; and sure, there are characters who need to be nudged into their own book. But it’s an alphabet book. That rhymes. Tsk tsk tsk.

“I’m firing it into the air and I’m not entirely sure where it will land, and hopefully there’s a soft landing underneath, Jeffers says. “Or it might hit a rock and bounce around for a little while. The fun is in firing it into the air in the first place.”

If that’s the case, here’s a hearty toast to more fun from the letters O and J. Gordon West is a writer and illustrator living in Brooklyn.

He is at work on his own picture book and teen novel.

Once Upon an Alphabet received a starred review in the Sept. 1, 2014, issue of Kirkus Reviews.

Once Upon an Alphabet Short Stories for All the Letters Jeffers, Oliver Philomel (112 pp.) $26.99 | Oct. 14, 2014 978-0-399-16791-1 |

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to be a crucial mistake for the bad guys, however, as resourceful Juanita gets off a call for help that both brings the Baileys and Johnsons together for a collective rescue operation and, amid much breakage of glass and heroic feats of derring-do, foils the evil schemes of scenery-chewing archfiend October Jones. Rafter makes a likable narrator, emotionally open and determined to be both a good superhero and a good friend.

Like its predecessor, a satisfying, Incredibles-style mix of awesome exploits and common family issues. (Fantasy. 10-12)

A PLAGUE OF BOGLES

Jinks, Catherine HMH Books (336 pp.) $16.99 | Jan. 6, 2015 978-0-544-08747-7 Series: How to Catch a Bogle, 2 Jinks returns to Victorian London’s fetid stews and ragged demimonde in this sequel to How to Catch a Bogle (2013).

Continuing to depict her setting in Dickensian detail, the author shifts her tale’s main focus from young bogler Birdie to ex-thief Jem Barbary. He struggles to reconcile conflicting drives to find and exact revenge on his treacherous former fagin Sarah Pickles and to chivvy weary old bogle-killer Alfred Bunce out of retirement in order to become his new apprentice. Something, as it eventually develops, is drawing the deadly, child-eating bogles— formerly so rare as to be widely believed to be mythical—to concentrate in one particular neighborhood’s sewers and cellars.

Scary as the monsters are, and despite several narrow squeaks, luring them out and killing them with Alfred’s magical spear takes on a routine air as Jem’s warring agendas and stubborn refusal to believe that he has any true friends take center stage.

Moreover, Josiah Lubbock, a promisingly irritating new character, is continually trotted out but then goes on to play no significant role (at least in this episode), and despite the author’s efforts to relegate the previous volume’s vivid, angelic-voiced protagonist Birdie to a supporting role, she continues to outshine Jem and everyone else.

Hints at the end of a larger story arc notwithstanding, this continuation never develops much steam or clear direction. (glossary of monsters and period slang) (Historical fantasy. 10-13)

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CUT ME FREE

Johansson, J.R. Farrar, Straus and Giroux (304 pp.) $17.99 | Jan. 27, 2015 978-0-374-30023-4 After escaping abuse at the hands of her parents, one girl must fight to save herself and those closest to her from a new threat.

Piper, 17, has fled the horrors of her parents’ attic to make a new life in Philadelphia. A year after she left, the voice of her late little brother, Sam, echoes in her head, and the memory of the bloodshed she left in her wake haunts her. Trusting people is out of the question. Piper enlists the help of Cam, a tech wizard, to give her a new identity, and soon she’s taken on the alias of Charlotte Thompson. But when she sees a little girl covered in bruises being dragged by a suspicious man, she’s stung with flashes of her own violent past. Ensuring the girl’s safety becomes her new focus. Soon ominous messages begin appearing at Piper’s door and then inside her apartment. Someone’s found Piper, and they want to play. Johansson creates a painfully real protagonist in Piper. When moments of light shine through the near-constant darkness, readers will feel the surge of hope too. But the relationship between Piper and Cam reads less as passionate and more as situational; their constant clashes grow tiresome in an already bleak book.

A thriller tracing the evolution of a strong-willed protagonist as she rallies against the demons of her past, dampened by forced romance. (Thriller. 12-18)

RENEGADE

John, Antony Dial (304 pp.) $17.99 | Nov. 13, 2014 978-0-8037-3685-6 Series: Elemental, 3 The action-packed conclusion to the dystopic alt-history trilogy.

Readers are plunged directly into the middle of the action in this final installment of the middle-of-the-road series that began with Elemental (2012). Sixteen-year-old Thomas and his band of fellow elementals—Alice, Rose, Griffin and the others—escape by the skin of their teeth from an infestation of plague-ridden rats and an invasion by enemy pirates one week after they set sail to return home to Roanoke Island from a failed mission in Sumter, South Carolina. Sparks continue to fly between Thom and Alice as he discovers more about his own element and its strange powers. Meanwhile, their archenemy, the pirate Dare, follows them back to their home on Roanoke. John’s history and mapping skills can get confusing, especially when he weaves in actual historical figures and places. Still, readers who have made it this far will be relieved to discover that he spends kirkus.com

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“Neonakis’ illustrations use the colors of that northern world splendidly, especially the blues and greens of the water echoed by the baby’s green footie sleeper with its fur-trimmed hood.” froms sweetest kulu

much of the latter half of the novel explaining the convoluted mysteries and secrets that have no doubt continued to intrigue them throughout the trilogy. Even after the final reveal, however, the mythology of John’s universe still feels a little shaky, but that won’t stop readers from devouring page upon page of hangings, thousands of hungry, angry rats, betrayals and more.

Fun but ultimately unremarkable. (Post-apocalyptic historical adventure. 12-16)

FLOATING BOY AND THE GIRL WHO COULDN’T FLY

Jones, P.T. ChiTeen (272 pp.) $12.99 | Nov. 11, 2014 978-1-7714-8173-1

Mary’s world is turned upside down when an impossible act derails her young cousin’s birthday party.

A mysterious, skinny boy captures Mary’s attention at her massive family’s gathering. The boy goes on to attract everyone’s attention when he climbs a tree and jumps, only to float up, off and away. Soon Mary’s young brother begins floating as well, and when a shady man turns up asking questions, Mary is caught up in an increasingly bizarre chain of events with only one objective: protect her brother at all costs. That single-mindedness is what ultimately sinks the book: Mary’s worry-wart tendency becomes her defining characteristic, without enough other personality traits to make her feel rounded. In a world where wonderful and fantastic things are happening, it’s a bummer to be stuck with the one character who refuses to have a good time. Making things worse, the flying boy has even less charisma then Mary. Mary’s friend Liv is a spitfire, the only bright spot in a novel that should be filled to the brim with excitement and fun. The blue mood deflates narrative interest, making the short book feel all too long. The action and romance elements are botched as well, delivered with the grace and subtlety one expects from cookie-cutter teen melodrama.

Alas, this book sinks. (Fantasy. 12-16)

SWEETEST KULU

Kalluk, Celina Illus. by Neonakis, Alexandria Inhabit Media (32 pp.) $16.95 | Nov. 1, 2014 978-1-927095-77-5 A newborn child is welcomed by the sun, the wind, the Arctic land and all its animal inhabitants, who bring gifts of love and self-respect.

This sweet bedtime poem, in the tradition of Debra Frasier’s On the Day You Were Born (1991), is filled with the animals of the far north and the values of the author’s Inuit culture.

Believe in yourself. Be generous and helpful, modest and kind, creative and spontaneous, patient and never lazy. “[G]et out of |

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bed as soon as you wake.” Look to the stars. Lead gently. Neonakis’ illustrations use the colors of that northern world splendidly, especially the blues and greens of the water echoed by the baby’s green footie sleeper with its fur-trimmed hood. Her animals—from snow buntings and musk oxen to Arctic char and beluga whales—are stylized but recognizable, and the baby is charming. The text, a series of stanzas spoken or sung by a mother to her child, is written in sentences that are lengthy for a poem or song, but the sections are patterned in a way that is soothing and predictable, and each includes an affirmation: “happy Kulu,” “magnificent Kulu,” “cutest Kulu,” “beloved Kulu.”

“Kulu” is an Inuktitut term of endearment, but this appreciation for the baby and the baby’s world would make a lovely gift for any new parent. (Picture book. 0-5)

10 ULTIMATE TRUTHS GIRLS SHOULD KNOW

Kampakis, Kari Thomas Nelson (224 pp.) $12.99 paper | Nov. 4, 2014 978-0-529-11103-6

Expanding on the author’s popular, titular blog comes this guidebook for teen girls.

Kampakis’ book begins with an arresting assertion: “There are two things no one can prepare you for. One is how fun it is to be a girl. The other is how hard it is to be a girl.” The upside includes things like slumber parties with meaty talks, dancing in the kitchen, unfettered squealing with delight...but then there’s the darker side: emotional wrestling with mean girls, cliques, teen sexual mores and dealing with social media debacles. While she covers a wide spectrum of teen-girl conundrums, Kampakis doesn’t short shrift any, delving in deep with a firm but deftly sensitive resolve, illustrating her points with anecdotes and leavening her message with dashes of humor. She packs the pages with advice on building confidence, creating a “good reputation” (or restoring one), how to be and spot a true friend, creating healthy relationships with teen boys, and developing patience and fostering perseverance. The book reveals the author’s strong religious bent, with frequent references to God, quotes from the Bible and invocations of Satan, leaving some passages sounding as if they’re written by a hip Sunday school teacher. Miniquizzes and discussion questions invite readers to sort out their feelings and insecurities and home in on their aspirations.

A smart and solidly written guide to life as seen through stained-glass windows. (Nonfiction. 12-16)

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“Karre cleverly uses an intrusive narrator to lead readers to make inferences and keep the pages turning….” from certain signals

ALL YOU ARE

Karre, Elizabeth Darby Creek (120 pp.) $7.95 paper | $27.93 PLB | Nov. 1, 2014 978-1-4677-4477-5 978-1-4677-3510-0 PLB Series: Gift This entry in the new paranormal series The Gift focuses on Da’Quan, who wants to become more popular and maybe even have a chance with Ashantay.

In this series, teens select a paranormal gift that may—or may not—help them. Da’Quan chooses the ability to channel traits from other people, not realizing that he might get not only their positive traits, but their negative ones as well. He’s only an average basketball player, but when he channels Daniel’s superior ability, he easily owns the court. However, he also finds that he’s become terribly insecure around other people. Later he channels Shaquetta’s fashion sense, but he can’t stop himself from commenting on others’ fashion mistakes. He channels Terrell’s comedic abilities but gains yet another problem. Can Da’Quan find romance with Ashantay before he damages his social life? Karre writes directly to an African-American teen audience, but there’s plenty to attract a wider one. The paranormal twist in the book will entice readers, but the important content is Da’Quan’s evolution from a rather shy boy into a more self-confident, assured young man who knows himself and doesn’t need the constant buzz of popularity to give him worth.

And there’s a bit of romance as Da’Quan pursues Ashantay.

An entertaining and surprisingly hefty slim read. (Paranormal fiction. 12-18)

CERTAIN SIGNALS

Karre, Elizabeth Darby Creek (112 pp.) $7.95 paper | $27.93 PLB | Nov. 1, 2014 978-1-4677-4479-9 978-1-4677-3511-7 PLB Series: Gift In this entry in The Gift series featuring a group of African-American teens, Rashawn is granted a paranormal ability that enables him to detect affection.

Rashawn despairs that he can never tell when girls really like him. He chooses to have his left ear grow warm whenever he is around someone who truly likes someone else. He’s embarrassed to learn that his ear grows toasty when he’s around his parents, who remain crazy about each other. He realizes that he will have to get any prospective girlfriends alone in order to be able to tell if the girl really likes just him instead of anyone in the vicinity. He joins a cooking class at the local teen center and meets a cute girl named Kennedy, but his ear stays cold. Meanwhile, he can’t figure out why his ear burns whenever he’s around his friend Terrell. Can Rashawn get that ear burning when he’s 144

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alone with Kennedy? Karre cleverly uses an intrusive narrator to lead readers to make inferences and keep the pages turning: “You know who Kennedy’s dad is. Oh yes, you do.” She doesn’t shy from weighty issues, tackling racial profiling (or “driving while black”) from both the driver’s and law enforcement’s side.

The ultraslim book has the chance to appeal to an audience that may be reluctant to try a longer book.

Plenty of punch in a short space. (Paranormal romance.

12-18)

THIS SHATTERED WORLD

Kaufman, Amie; Spooner, Meagan Disney-Hyperion (400 pp.) $17.99 | $9.99 e-book | Dec. 23, 2014 978-1-4231-7103-4 978-1-4231-8779-0 e-book Series: Starbound, 2 It’s not exactly a meet-cute.

Despite a cease-fire, the planet of Avon is only a hair’s breadth from tipping into open war, so it’s not surprising that two characters from opposing sides have an unfriendly first encounter when they meet in a bar. It’s unsettling that when Flynn, a white teen from a community of rebels living in hidden caves, uses a gun and gasoline fumes to kidnap Lee, a brown-skinned, partly Chinese military officer with a combat specialty, readers are expected to accept Flynn’s physical dominance. Readers unperturbed by this early dynamic—later, Lee becomes more kickass, and her competence equalizes with Flynn’s—will find a fast-paced adventure, though enjoyment requires accepting that a forceful kidnapping is a fine start to an oh-but-they’re-enemies romance. Alternating first-person narration, Flynn and Lee overcome wariness to work together, coping with barbarous mind manipulation, horrific violence and mysteries—like why Avon’s terraforming never progresses to become an ecosystem and how an unidentified compound of buildings repeatedly vanishes into midair. The bad guy and his methods—mind control of humans via torture of aliens from another realm—carry forward from series opener These Broken Stars (2013), and its protagonists have cameos here.

The cringe-worthy romantic setup chafes, but on the plus side, this soft science fiction offers intense, nongratuitous bloodshed, corporate conspiracy and intriguing explorations of culpability. (Science fiction. 13 & up)

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SNEAKER CENTURY A History of Athletic Shoes

Keyser, Amber J. Twenty-First Century/Lerner (64 pp.) $34.65 PLB | Jan. 1, 2015 978-1-4677-2640-5 PLB

A comprehensive look at the rise of sneakers in American culture.

Exploring a narrow field that nevertheless yields plenty of interest, the author shines a light on several aspects of sneaker culture. Topics range from the footwear’s early development in the early 19th century to its rise in popularity that coincides with the rise of the American teenager. The book’s layout augments the text with colorful infographics and various small sidebars that, while not necessary to the historical narrative, are well worth highlighting on their own. Discussions of the shoe’s rise to fame in the 1950s and resurgence in the 1980s (both thanks to popular figures like James Dean, Steve McQueen, Run-D.M.C. and Michael Jordan) are the best bits.

A portion regarding Olympic runners and shady endorsement dealings makes for another amusing section. A discussion of the global economics of shoe manufacturing arrives a bit too late in the book to capture readers’ interest, and it doesn’t help that this section is much less elaborate than all those that came before it. Another lesser moment is a look back at the 1970s fad of “jogging,” something no one wants to be reminded of.

An illuminating and amusing look at a subject with much more history than one might expect. (Nonfiction. 12-16)

EVERYBODY SAYS SHALOM

Kimmelman, Leslie Illus. by Shipman, Talitha Random House (40 pp.) $17.99 | $20.99 PLB | Jan. 27, 2015 978-0-385-38336-3 978-0375-97343-7 PLB

This introduction to Israel is a book that can be read out of order.

It’s easy to spot the moment when this picture book turns into a rhyming dictionary. After several pages of rhyming verse, the syntax shifts, abruptly, from couplets (“Everybody says shalom / passing by a golden dome”) to a staccato list of words (“Gazing. / Grazing. // Fishing. / Wishing”). There are two types of rhyming words in this book. Some readers will see coming: “Right to left / and left to right. // In the morning... // late at night.” Other rhymes are so unpredictable they’re nearly random: “Haying. // Praying.”

There’s no plot to speak of, except that the characters take a trip to Israel and fly home afterward. The book doesn’t quite work as a story or as poetry, but it does make a pretty good travel guide.

The family visits more than a dozen sites in Israel (the highlights are listed in an appendix at the back), and the book makes them look very appealing. Shipman’s Raschka-esque paintings have as many colors as a fruit bowl. Observant readers will also notice a pink gecko hiding on just about every page. |

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The sites are well-chosen and terrifically multicultural.

(They include a shuk and a Baha’i shrine.) Readers may like them even better if they ignore the fragmented rhymes on top of the pictures. (Picture book. 3- 7)

SICK SIMON

Krall, Dan Illus. by Krall, Dan Simon & Schuster (48 pp.) $17.99 | $10.99 e-book | Jan. 13, 2015 978-1-4424-9097-0 978-1-4424-9098-7 e-book Krall’s latest is a disgusting, tonguein-cheek lesson in contagiousness.

Simon loves school so much that even a cold (with its attendant snotty nose) won’t keep him home. He kisses his family and boards the bus, proceeding to vomit out the window on the way: “He...had fun the whole way,” the text understates. The merest contact or proximity leads others to suddenly, and unrealistically, sport Simon’s symptoms. The week includes show-and-tell, a zoo field trip, a game of kickball and a child-free bus on Friday afternoon, all the children having finally succumbed to his illness. The three germs that have been following him around all week finally introduce themselves and high-five him for being such a “germ hero.” Horrified, Simon does his best to stop their spread, washing his hands, covering his mouth, resting and hydrating, though the same cannot be said for one classmate on Monday morning. Krall’s illustrations work in the ick factor, his Photoshopped characters sporting oozing and dripping poison-green noses as each comes into contact with Simon. Careful observers may spot the colorful germs before they introduce themselves, but even those who don’t will want to go back and try to find all their appearances.

Though the science is not particularly solid, the message is an important one, and with the level of gross in the illustrations, it is sure to get through to young audiences.

(Picture book. 4-8)

VIOLET AND VICTOR WRITE THE BEST-EVER BOOKWORM BOOK

Kuipers, Alice Illus. by Murguia, Bethanie Deeney Little, Brown (40 pp.) $17.00 | Dec. 2, 2014 978-0-316-21200-7

Twins collaborate in writing an original story about a “bookeating monster.”

When bossy Violet Small decides to “write the best-ever book in the whole entire world,” she cajoles her twin brother, Victor, into helping. Far more interested in his pet worms, Victor suggests their hero should be a strong, brave worm, which Violet promptly changes to a strong, brave girl named Violet. |

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Overhearing the school librarian complain that pages are missing from a book, Victor creates a gripping plot starring their heroine, who “creeps by comic books,” “slips through stories,” “eyeballs encyclopedias,” “peers in pages” and “flies through fairy tales” in her quest to save the library from a terrible book-eating monster. The twins’ editorializing is tracked from page to page, with Violet speaking in purple type and Victor in orange, while their versions of the story appear in childlike print in lavender and orange notebook-paper text boxes. Murguia comically presents the twins in graphite pencil sketches and, in “homage to the printed page,” combines Photoshopped multimedia images from books, maps, library cards and origami sculptures to create fantastical backgrounds for their fictional hunt for the notso-terrible book-eating monster.

Clever fare for aspiring bookworms (especially siblings). (Picture book. 4- 7)

IN THE FORBIDDEN CITY

Kwong-chiu, Chiu Illus. by Design and Cultural Studies Workshop Translated by Wang, Ben Tuttle (52 pp.) $19.95 | Oct. 14, 2014 978-0-9893776-0-7 In this Chinese import, readers become tourists as each page turn provides views into labyrinthine courtyards and palaces once reserved for imperial China’s emperors.

For almost 600 years, the Forbidden City was home to emperors and their entourages during the Ming and Qing dynasties from 1421 to 1912. Today it stands as the world’s largest enclosed palace and museum, visited by millions of tourists.

If readers can’t visit Beijing, this gives an intriguing alternative.

On the table of contents, a bird’s-eye-view plan offers a helpful guide to where historical events took place. Through gray-toned, detailed illustrations on multipage spreads, the sections of the Forbidden City unfold, literally, into readers’ hands. While the history covered is complex, there are elements throughout that make it accessible. Tourists and historical Chinese figures alike (and one curious cat) populate the pages, some with thought bubbles expressing facts and observations. A roll call of emperors showcases how each one was famous or infamous. However, most stories of everyday life, while interesting, can be quite dense. The type size is small. These sections are better suited for upper middle grades and older. But all ages will enjoy sifting through grand architectural renderings, especially with the enclosed magnifying glass.

An impressive introduction to the Forbidden City. (author’s note) (Nonfiction. 11 & up)

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IGNITE

Larson, Sara B. Scholastic (304 pp.) $17.99 | $17.99 e-book | Jan. 6, 2015 978-0-545-64474-7 978-0-545-64475-4 e-book Series: Defy, 2 A girl fighter fights evil in a midseries time filler.

Disfigured by scars and outed as a girl, superb sword fighter Alexa is King Damian’s most valued guard. Though Damian relies on her completely as a soldier and adviser, the awkwardness between the pair encroaches on their every interaction. Alexa has told Damian she doesn’t love him, convinced that a relationship would destroy her beloved king (she feels she’d be bad for him, for no apparent reason beyond her disfiguring scars). Every time she sees him, Alexa is struck with such blinding physical pain—in her chest, stomach, gut and skull—that readers might wonder if she should visit a doctor. A visit to the kingdom by villainous, alabaster-skinned desert people leaves the kingdom in danger from a wicked seductress and her brother, a malicious goon who tortures his own henchmen for kicks and giggles. Though the dastardly fiends don’t appear to be dark sorcerers, they certainly have mysterious powers almost impossible to resist. Still, no dark magic or potential war with the Blevonese can distract Alexa from her Very Important Love Triangle with two bland blank slates.

Adequate heroic fantasy only for those who must have every girl-with-a-sword. (Fantasy. 12-14)

WHEN

Laurie, Victoria Hyperion (336 pp.) $17.99 | Jan. 13, 2015 978-1-4847-0008-2 If you could know the date of your death, would you?

For Maddie, there’s no choice: For her whole life, she’s had the ability to see the date of anyone’s death, hovering just over the forehead. But her gift hasn’t helped her much—it didn’t prevent her police-officer father from being killed in the line of duty, and it hasn’t stopped her grief-stricken mother from descending into alcoholism. Now, Maddie does her best to blend in, uses her ability to make some extra money for herself and her mother, and spends time with her best friend, Stubs. But then a client’s son disappears and is later found dead on the date that Maddie predicted he would die. Suspicion falls squarely on Maddie, especially when another teenager is murdered in similar fashion—and Stubs becomes caught up in the investigation too. The tension inexorably mounts as Maddie faces heartbreaking choices.

Readers will root for Maddie not only to find the killer, but to gain a little happiness, too. Laurie’s debut for teens is quite an kirkus.com

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“There’s a seriousness about the craft that’s refreshing; Levine is determined to help young writers get the underpinnings right….” from writer to writer

accomplishment: Maddie’s voice rings true, and her character development is handled well. Some adult characters are less well-rounded, yet the compelling plot overcomes these flaws.

The character development is just as riveting as the plot in this well-constructed thriller. (Paranormal thriller. 12-18)

CONVERGENCE

Lee, Stan; Moore, Stuart Illus. by Tong, Andie Disney Press (512 pp.) $16.99 | Jan. 27, 2015 978-1-4231-8085-2 Series: Zodiac Legacy, 1 In this series opener that marks Marvel comics legend Lee’s debut for kids, 12 people—some heroes, some villains— receive superpowers based on the signs of the Chinese zodiac. The heroes, of course, are the youngest characters in the book.

The descriptive prose is as spare and unambiguous as an oldfashioned interactive computer game—think “Zork,” from the 1970s. “[The stairway] was made of wood, with a creaky old railing beside it. The walls were worn metal, stained and weathered by time.” But the book contains enough fight scenes for several issues of a Marvel comic, and they’re joyously inventive. People reveal their characters by the way they fight. A tiny girl with the ability to teleport wins fights by running away, over and over again, until the other person is exhausted; she’s the Rabbit. These confrontations aren’t described with the clarity Lee and Moore use to talk about the settings. Readers may have to look at a few passages twice to figure out just who hit whom. Fortunately, Tong loves drawing battle scenes.

Pages and pages are crammed with energetic black-and-white drawings of people bounding around the room. But the characters are so engaging that the scenes where they’re joking around and telling ridiculous stories are more entertaining than the battle sequences.

The prose may be too bare-bones for some readers, but the surprises are genuine, and the cliffhangers will bring people back for the next adventure. (Adventure. 8-12)

WRITER TO WRITER From Think to Ink

Levine, Gail Carson Harper/HarperCollins (304 pp.) $16.99 | $6.99 paper | $6.99 e-book Dec. 23, 2014 978-0-06-227530-1 978-0-06-227529-5 paper 978-0-06-227531-8 e-book A best-selling children’s author offers a comprehensive guide for aspirants.

In 2009, Levine started a blog about writing, short essays that became a writers’ advice column, and this volume presents the blog’s “greatest hits.” Character building and “hatching the |

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plot” are clearly what young writers get stuck on most often and thus receive substantial treatment here. Other issues, such as theme, “mid-story crisis,” back story, flashback, foreshadowing and mystery are also covered. There’s a seriousness about the craft that’s refreshing; Levine is determined to help young writers get the underpinnings right—verb tense, using a thesaurus (or “word grazing,” as she calls it), clarity and grammar. She urges readers to take to heart her advice about usage, writing, “here’s a command about grammar and spelling: Get it right. An editor won’t give the newbie writer any latitude on this.” Most chapters end with the friendly reminder to “[h]ave fun, and save what you write!” The volume has a pleasing circularity, beginning with the author’s discussion of her own blog and closing with advice on writing blogs, since a well-written blog offers what Levine’s became, a means of mutual support for writers.

A well-meaning and friendly resource that may well save young writers much time and distress and, perhaps, lead to success in getting published. (Nonfiction. 11 & up)

THE NUMBER 7

Lidh, Jessica Merit Press (272 pp.) $17.99 | Dec. 5, 2014 978-1-4405-8306-3 In this fresh take on a familiar paradigm, a sensitive teen inherits a wellkept family secret touching on Sweden’s role in World War II that’s profoundly affected her family.

It’s been five years since their mother died, but Louisa and her older sister, Greta, like their dad, still haven’t healed. Greta’s miserable, but Louisa approves their father’s decision, prompted by his own mother’s death, to move the family to his childhood home in Pennsylvania. Long estranged from his parents, he’s a proponent of never looking back. Louisa begins to wonder: Who was her dad as a child?

What made him the man he is now? More than ready for change, Louisa enjoys school, especially photography class, and basks in unaccustomed attention from two boys. She’d be content to float along on the sparkling present but for the calls on the old, disconnected rotary phone in the attic that anchor her to the past. Each time she answers, a voice begins to relay a chapter, drawn from the well of vanished family history, in the life of her father’s father in Sweden. He and his twin brother were barely adults when war broke out and increasingly troubled by Sweden’s compromised neutrality. Subplots and an awkward, occult plot device briefly distract, but Louisa and her taut, fragile connection to a rarely explored past hold readers’ interest.

Insightful and compassionate storytelling. (Historical fantasy. 12-16)

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“These twins make learning to read double the fun.” from twice as silly

THE SQUICKERWONKERS

Lilly, Evangeline Illus. by Fraser-Allen, Johnny Titan Books (42 pp.) $16.99 | Nov. 18, 2014 978-1-78329-545-6 Series: Squickerwonkers, 1

Actress Lilly makes her picture-book debut.

Opening with a slant rhyme, the preface claims Selma discovered a “wagon-like ride,” though how this is possible when she’s just “wandered away from a fair” is puzzling. A disembodied voice welcomes her and—over the course of 10 action-void pages—introduces the nine creepy Squickerwonker marionettes. Verse peppered with odd word choices and awkward phrasing makes it clear that rhyme takes precedence over story.

While the illustrations only occasionally succeed in highlighting the Squickerwonkers’ unsavory qualities, Fraser-Allen does a commendable job of creating an eerie atmosphere. When Selma bravely joins the Squickerwonkers onstage, they purposefully pop her balloon (evidently prized, though it is not mentioned in the text before this). Her subsequent tantrum gets her labeled a brat and turned into a Squickerwonker herself (with very Coraline-esque coin eyes). Readers may wonder why a girl who stands up for herself is characterized as spoiled and punished. Is this book a cautionary tale? Perhaps, but its moral is uncertain, especially given the rushed and unclear ending.

While it’s gratifying to see a story that trusts readers with fear, the lack of a substantial plot and poor rhyme quality make this one to pass by, Peter Jackson’s imprimatur in the introduction notwithstanding. (Picture book. 5-8)

TWICE AS SILLY

Lin, Grace Illus. by Lin, Grace Little, Brown (48 pp.) $16.00 | Nov. 11, 2014 978-0-316-18402-1 Series: Ling & Ting Adorable twin sisters Ling and Ting are as funny and fresh as ever in their third early reader.

In “The Garden,” the first of six short episodes, Ting plants some now-ubiquitous cupcakes, hoping to grow more. When Ling explains that only seeds will grow, Ting asks if beans are seeds. After Ling confirms that indeed beans are seeds, Ting amusingly responds, “Then next I will plant jelly beans.” The humor continues throughout the accessible text as the girls try to swing higher than trees, come up with an inventive plan to pick apples and discover that, as twins, they can read minds (it helps that Ting is “thinking nothing”). “Lucky Red Paint” reflects the girls’ Chinese heritage when they paint their toys red, because the color is considered lucky in China.

Finally, “Not a Silly Story” is a clever—and definitely silly—story 148

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that recaps elements of the previous five narratives. Ling and Ting take turns telling a story featuring two rabbits, a cupcake tree, a lucky red toy and mind reading. In addition, this culminating story depicts printed, childlike text on lined paper that will be familiar to most school-aged children. Once again Ling and Ting are not exactly the same, as Lin’s vibrant, patterned gouache illustrations reflect their subtle and not-so-subtle differences.

These twins make learning to read double the fun.

(Early reader. 5-8)

INFECTED

Littlefield, Sophie Delacorte (256 pp.) $17.99 | $10.99 e-book | $20.99 PLB Jan. 6, 2015 978-0-385-74106-4 978-0-375-98357-3 e-book 978-0-375-98983-4 PLB This is a tale with all the elements popular in this phase of 21st-century teen lit, ranging from first (but oh-so-true) love to Eastern European bad guys to the age-old supermensch.

Orphaned Carina Monroe loses her uncle in an apparent auto accident. Now she only has Tanner, whom she will lose all too soon to Berkley in September. Morose, disoriented, now under the thumb of her uncle’s co-worker Sheila, Carina attends his memorial service surrounded by security agents who want to restrict her movements and her privacy. She learns from Sheila that her life is in danger, and if she wants to survive, she has to trust Sheila. Instead, Carina takes to her heels with only Tanner for support. Together and on the run, they follow clues her uncle left trying to guide them to safety, but they only find themselves deeper in danger. They also find that their senses and abilities are changing, giving them skills they never had before. They’ve been infected, and if they don’t find the antidote fast, they’re going to die horrible deaths—if the bad guys don’t kill them first. There’s little new here, from the plot to the characters—even Tanner’s hunky frame and “cobalt-blue eyes” are tired cliches.

Meant to be a fast-paced teen thriller, this instead is a derivative novel that is readable but all-too-familiar.

(Thriller. 14-18)

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TRANSCENDENT

Livingston, Lesley HarperTeen (352 pp.) $17.99 | $10.99 e-book | Dec. 1, 2014 978-0-06-206313-7 978-0-06-206316-8 e-book Series: Starling, 3 An action-packed conclusion to the Starling trilogy.

Mason Starling is struggling to keep her recently created alternate self—a Valkyrie of Norse myth—in check (Descendent, 2013). If she doesn’t, she’ll fulfill a prophecy that’ll bring about the end of the world. This transformation turns Mason into a powerful, terrifying force who’s at least the equal of her supernaturally gifted boyfriend, the Fennrys Wolf. But even Fenn can’t avoid death after being stabbed, and Mason makes a deal with Rafe—the Egyptian god of death, Anubis—to save Fenn’s life by transforming him into a werewolf. Having Anubis turn himself and his followers into wolves and not jackals is not the only disappointingly convenient tweaking of the rules—both of the book’s world and of mythology in general. Even if it gives the good guys an edge, this plot-driven license feels at least partly like cheating. As Mason and her fellows attempt to thwart the apocalypse, readers may be distracted by the gratingly contrived slang used by the teenage characters and a narration that sometimes feels it’s drowning in metaphor and simile. At least Mason and Fenn’s romance finally feels valid, as they’ve now had enough time and shared experiences to be in love.

Fans may come away with questions but should be satisfied on the whole. (Paranormal romance. 14-18)

EMILY AND THE MIGHTY OM

Lolley, Sarah Illus. by Kao, Sleepless Simply Read (40 pp.) $16.95 | Nov. 1, 2014 978-1-897476-35-2

When a yogi moves in next door, Emily learns enough to help him when he gets stuck.

Emily wonders why her new neighbor, Albert, “twist[s] himself into all kinds of strange positions on his front lawn.” He tells her about yoga and the mantra “om,” explaining, “It’s a magic word that everything understands....It helps me feel quiet and relaxed.” Emily tries it for herself but doesn’t fully realize its power until she helps Albert when he gets “stuck.” While this could be read figuratively, illustrations show Albert as literally “all twisted up,” with his legs and arms like twisted taffy and sweat beads on his face. This seems to poke fun, as does the “Dude! You’re totally stuck!” offered by a passing lifeguard. He and others try to help and struggle to figure out what Albert means when he moans “O...!” Nothing helps—not the phone suggested by the lifeguard, the garden gnome a police officer |

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brings nor the poem of the librarian. There’s an odd dissonance in the humor—Albert seems to be genuinely suffering, and the others’ buffoonery, however well-intentioned, seems ill-placed.

Once Emily steps in and says, “Ommmmmm,” Albert relaxes, and his arms and legs come “unstuck.” This inspires everyone to say “om” and use relaxation and yoga when they get stuck—figuratively or otherwise.

A regrettably awkward introduction to yoga. (Picture book. 3-5)

LESSONS I NEVER LEARNED AT MEADOWBROOK ACADEMY

Maccie, Liz Diversion Books (195 pp.) $12.99 paper | $4.99 e-book Nov. 4, 2014 978-1-62681-418-9 978-1-62681-312-0 e-book

Roberta Romano attends her first day at the affluent Meadowbrook Academy after being removed from her old school for bad behavior.

Roberta is a smart girl who just happens to make increasingly poor decisions, and these bad choices have earned her a one-way ticket to the strictest and richest school in town.

Despite coming from the wrong side of the tracks, Roberta makes a connection with two social outcasts, Annie and Mervin.

The short book covers just Roberta’s first day at school, but it’s a very eventful day. Hearts are broken, friendships are forged, and secrets are revealed. That all sounds like a lot of sentimental claptrap, but Maccie weaves it all together with an emotional maturity often missing from coming-of-age drama. Character comes first, and although there is the seemingly requisite wacky stunt in the third act, it merely serves as a backdrop as opposed to standing awkwardly as some clumsy metaphor. A few stock background characters muddy up the novel’s midsection, and Roberta’s mother is a frustrating caricature, but those are minor quibbles when all is said and done.

A solid and promising debut. (Fiction. 12-16)

WINTER FALLS

Maggi, Nicole Medallion Press (316 pp.) $9.99 paper | Dec. 16, 2014 978-1-60542-683-9 Series: Twin Willows Trilogy, 1

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This first book of a planned trilogy finds 16-year-old Alessia Jacobs living in boring Twin Willows, Maine, where nothing ever happens—that is, until the mysterious Wolfe family arrives in town and Alessia’s instantly drawn to their

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Days later, after encountering Jonah again at school, Alessia’s confused by visions of becoming a falcon. She’ll soon discover these visions are real: She’s a member of the Benandanti, an ancient group of warriors who can separate their souls from their bodies and transform into powerful animals, something they’ll rely on to keep potent magic from falling into the hands of the conscienceless Malandanti, foes with similar shape-shifting talents. Deciding whether to accept the Call, Alessia weighs typical teen impulses like wanting to spend time with heartthrob Jonah against the responsibilities Benandanti membership requires.

Maggi’s pacing is quick, and her imaginative prose (with its ear for dialogue) supports a cast of characters, including Alessia’s fiercely protective Italian mother, Lidia. All elements combine to create a nicely textured real world where a surreal battle’s set to take place. Intriguing questions set the stage for the sequel: Did Alessia’s father’s death have anything to do with the paranormal world Alessia finds herself in? How much does Lidia know, and will she play a part in the unfolding drama? Will Jonah and his hard-to-read twin, Bree, be friends or foes in the coming battle?

Readers will eagerly await the next installment in this promising paranormal adventure. (Paranormal adventure.

12-16)

FDR AND THE AMERICAN CRISIS

Marrin, Albert Knopf (352 pp.) $24.99 | $11.99 e-book | $27.99 PLB Dec. 23, 2014 978-0-385-75359-3 978-0-385-75361-6 e-book 978-0-385-75360-9 PLB

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An antique Japanese sword causes havoc in contemporary London in this series opener.

Growing up in the U.K., Mio has little knowledge of her Japanese heritage.

What she does have comes mostly from her late grandfather, who on one unforgettable occasion showed her their family’s heirloom katana. Mio knows it’s stupid to use a priceless family treasure as part of her costume for a Christmas party, but she can’t resist the temptation to accessorize with the Japanese long sword. Of course, when she removes the katana from its hiding place, she unwittingly awakens its powers and unleashes a monster from Japanese myth on London. In her first foray into urban fantasy, Marriott (Shadows of the Moon, 2012) wears her influences on her sleeve. Many details of the plot will feel familiar to fans of shonen manga and anime, like Tite Kubo’s Bleach or Kazue Kato’s Blue Exorcist. While Mio’s wry narration is appealing, her romance with Shinobu, a boy linked to the katana, progresses too quickly to instant love to be compelling. In the end, it’s a shame the London setting isn’t more fully explored, as the contrast between the setting and the use of Japanese myth has the potential to make this otherwise derivative adventure feel fresh.

Fast-paced but forgettable. (Urban fantasy. 13-16)

ANIMAL ABC

A comprehensive examination of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidency and its legacy.

For Marrin, Roosevelt’s influence was such that “we need to know about the thirty-second president because we cannot understand our world today without understanding his role in shaping it.” Marrin explores FDR’s early years of privilege, the complex relationships Roosevelt had with his mother and his wife, Eleanor, and his seemingly inevitable march to a life in politics. Roosevelt’s charm and ability to sway individuals and crowds are described in detail. FDR’s strong actions after assuming the presidency during the Great Depression were not without criticism, and Marrin acknowledges them, but the electorate remained supportive enough to elect him four times. This well-researched and highly detailed examination of FDR and his presidency provides insight for readers generations removed from the events. Every aspect of the story is included. Marrin artfully weaves the elements of FDR’s personality and home life with events occurring in the country and on the world stage. Colorful descriptions of other important leaders and clear storytelling contribute to a lively narrative; the generous inclusion of archival images makes for a handsome package.

Students of the period will be captivated. (source notes, further reading; index and photo credits not seen) (Biography. 12-18) 150

THE NAME OF THE BLADE

Marriott, Zoë Candlewick (368 pp.) $16.99 | Nov. 1, 2014 978-0-7636-6957-7

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Martin, Susi Illus. by Martin, Susi Firefly (32 pp.) $9.95 | Nov. 1, 2014 978-1-77085-456-7 This alphabet of the animal kingdom has a Victorian-scrapbook feel.

Among the flurry of themed alphabet books, traditional straightforward ABC offerings tend to be overlooked or shuffled off to the side. This one deserves a second look due to the clean composition, decorative letters (both upper- and lowercase) and clear images of the animals featured for each letter. C is for cheetah, camel, chameleon, caterpillar and crab. M is for macaw, mantis and monkeys. A few selections may be unfamiliar to young readers. Q is for quetzal, quail and quelea (another type of bird); U is for umbrella bird and uakari (a monkey); X is for X-ray fish, and Y is for yak. Z has three creatures: zebra, zorilla (a skunklike creature) and zander (a fish). The full-color illustrations are laid out on spacious sepia backgrounds with page borders that complement the ornate lettering. It is too bad that there is no legend or identification except for the one word naming the animal. Neither child nor parent is apt to know what a uakari is, beyond the obvious fact that it is a kirkus.com

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“…it’s the sensitive handling of emotional details and the trauma of too much connection that make this a story of interest.” from the unhappening of genesis lee

EARMUFFS FOR EVERYONE! How Chester Greenwood Became Known as the Inventor of Earmuffs

shaggy-furred, bald-faced monkey. A companion title, Animal 123, applies the same design principles to a counting-book that counts up from 1 caterpillar to 20 frogs, then by tens to 100 fish.

If older volumes of simple alphabet books have seen better days, this one will fill the bill for a replacement. (Picture book. 4- 6) (Animal 123: 978-1-77085-454-3)

McCarthy, Meghan Illus. by McCarthy, Meghan Paula Wiseman/Simon & Schuster (48 pp.) $17.99 | $10.99 e-book | Jan. 6, 2015 978-1-4814-0637-6 978-1-4814-0638-3 e-book

THE UNHAPPENING OF GENESIS LEE

McArthur, Shallee Sky Pony Press (352 pp.) $16.95 | Nov. 4, 2014 978-1-62914-647-8

Montagues and Capulets, Sharks and Jets; now it’s the Mementi (with their genetically modified, storable memories) and the Populace.

At 17, Mementi Genesis Lee and friend Cora are out on the town, their primary worry escaping parental notice and keeping their memory-filled Link beads covered just enough for safety. Someone (suspicion falls on the Populace) has been stealing the Mementi’s prized objects and with them, entire lives: Without memory, “your mind would be empty, grasping at a past you no longer had.” Meanwhile, rival Mementi/Populace companies research memory options; large protests and the growing number of Populace in the Mementi’s designer city further increase community tension. And now Kalan, the “nice” Populace boy Gena keeps forgetting to remember, holds important information—can she trust him?

For readers hooked on earbuds and constant social networking, the storyline should be intriguing, the ambiguities and plot twists reasonable. But it’s the sensitive handling of emotional details and the trauma of too much connection that make this a story of interest. The reactions to memory losses are painful and poignant; “I’m broken,” laments a Mementi. “I’ll never be the person I was going to be without those memories.” Wellselected Tennyson quotations set the mood for each chapter.

For anyone fascinated with thoughts of omniscience and total social connection—and who isn’t?—McArthur’s debut suggests fascinating and chilling possibilities. (Science fiction. 12-18)

A look not just at the invention (or not) of earmuffs, but at the process of inventing and the way that history can rewrite itself.

Every year in the beginning of December, the town of Farmington, Maine, has a parade in which all the participants (cars, buses, trucks, included) wear earmuffs. This parade celebrates Chester Greenwood, who was not the inventor of earmuffs. Wait.

What? That’s right. Chester Greenwood did not invent earmuffs; he improved the designs of other inventors, applied for a patent and is misremembered today as the inventor of the ubiquitous ear coverings so popular in cold climates. In her latest nonfiction title, McCarthy looks at how this happened, along the way delivering tidbits about patents; the lives of Greenwood and his wife, Isabel, who was active in the suffrage movement; other inventors who were really improvers (Edison and his light bulb); and the movement to dedicate a day to Greenwood. McCarthy’s acrylic illustrations nicely bring history to kids, mixing the familiar and the new. They realistically portray history (and Farmington!) and feature her characteristic big-eyed, round-faced people. Two photographs show Greenwood, sporting earmuffs of course, and a portion of the Chester Greenwood Day parade in downtown Farmington. Backmatter includes a fascinating note about the research for the book, more about patents and a bibliography.

While Greenwood was indeed an interesting character, the more valuable—even revolutionary—takeaway is that history isn’t necessarily reliable; it can change, and McCarthy’s genius is that she communicates this so easily to her audience. (Informational picture book. 4-10)

FIRST SNOW

McCarty, Peter Illus. by McCarty, Peter Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins (40 pp.) $16.99 | Dec. 31, 2014 978-0-06-218996-7 Why does everyone seem to love snow?

Pedro’s cousins are as eager to go out and play in the snow as they are to welcome him for a visit. But Pedro isn’t so certain. “I have never seen snow. I don’t think I will like it,” he explains. “Because it is cold. And I don’t like cold.” McCarty’s finely drawn furry characters pop out from minimalist backgrounds and, as usual, exude personality, warmth and wonder.

They beautifully depict Pedro as he gradually learns how to

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“Melvin’s tale of mystery opens with action, but then the story veers from murder to explore the thornier mysteries of human relationships.” from mr. samuel’s penny

play with his cousins and experiences snow for the very first time, the simple, straightforward text allowing the pictures to be the focus. Despite trepidation, Pedro dresses up in winter clothing but stands back as his cousins make snow angels and join some neighborhood children for some sledding. When it’s Pedro’s turn, however, he decides to give sledding a try. Will he change his mind about snow? Fans of Chloe (2012) and Henry in Love (2010) will recognize some of Pedro’s new friends, while those unfamiliar with the other books will have a most pleasant surprise in store as they meet McCarty’s community of realistic, kindhearted and gently humorous creatures.

Children will easily identify with Pedro’s hesitation as well as his triumph over his fears, while the subtle patience and acceptance offered by the other youngsters provides a nice balance. (Picture book. 3- 6)

A BED FOR BEAR

McFarland, Clive Illus. by McFarland, Clive Harper/HarperCollins (32 pp.) $17.99 | Nov. 4, 2014 978-0-06-223705-7 This simple tale riffs on a perennial theme: “There’s no place like home.”

It’s nearly time for bears to hibernate for the winter, but young Bernard thinks his clan’s cave is “too noisy, too big, and too crowded.” Pillow under arm and a yellow, fringed scarf wrapped around his neck, the green-eyed fellow sets off to find a better place to sleep. He tries out Frog’s lily pad, discovering that “[w]et isn’t very comfy.” Ditto for Bird’s windy perch and Rabbit’s too-tight burrow. Hedgehog sleeps in the open—not to Bernard’s liking. And while a spot in a hollow tree seems cozy (if lonely), Badger soon returns to claim it. A pink-tailed gray mouse, who’s observed Bernard’s entire quest, asks “What kind of bed DO you want?” When the bear answers, Mouse knows just what to do. A double-page spread shows the pair backtracking among all of Bernard’s stops, returning to a bed that’s perfect for him. Irish illustrator McFarland’s digitally composed crayon-and-watercolor cutouts are backed by expansive white space. Stylized animals and austere, minimalist flora evoke Jon Klassen’s work—and that sage little mouse, that of Leo Lionni. A visual progression shows that Bernard’s pillow, having trapped leaves and sticks along the way, is left behind for Hedgehog. A final picture depicts the sprawling, slumbering bears.

Pleasant—though it does not plow particularly new ground. (Picture book. 3- 6)

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MR. SAMUEL’S PENNY

Melvin, Treva Hall Poisoned Pencil (256 pp.) $10.95 paper | $5.99 e-book Nov. 4, 2014 978-1-929345-04-5 978-1-9293-4505-2 e-book

A city girl from Queens, New York, is thrust into the slowed-down homeyness of a small North Carolina town in 1972, but the summer she fears will drag on intolerably soon turns into the mystery of a missing penny and an unknown killer.

When Lizbeth rides her bike to the bridge, she feels the thrill of adventure. A car has gone over it; someone has died.

But seeing the dead man’s hand flutter lifelessly and learning that a baby has also died, Lizbeth feels the thrill morph into sickness. So begins Lizbeth’s quest to discover the origins of the rare 1909 wheat penny that the dying man clung to as he and his baby plunged to their deaths. Melvin’s tale of mystery opens with action, but then the story veers from murder to explore the thornier mysteries of human relationships. As a character, Lizbeth Landers is a spunky girl whose take on life is both illuminating and familiar. With a strong supporting cast that includes her aunt Alice and the new widow Miss Violet, she navigates the tricky waters of long-buried secrets while also learning something about what it means to be part of a community. While the slow pace might deter some younger readers, the beautiful phrasing will help to capture more sophisticated ones.

A smart, funny pleasure, as satisfying as sipping lemonade on the front porch with a favorite grandparent. (Mystery.

10-14)

MONSTERGAMI

Mitchell, David Firefly (96 pp.) $19.95 | $12.95 paper | Dec. 1, 2014 978-1-77085-409-3 978-1-77085-250-1 paper Kids who are hooked on Tom Angleberger’s series can fold a host of monsters to threaten their Origami Yodas.

Starting with the easiest-to-fold Imp and progressing through 16 other monsters to the dauntinglooking Sky Sprite, Mitchell arranges the book as a progression.

Most readers, though, will want to skip right to the three awesomest, those featured on the cover, with their prominent teeth and fangs; the remainder of the monsters are pretty generic and look much alike. Cleverly, however, these monsters use at least two squares of paper each, meaning that their bodies and heads can be mixed and matched to create new creatures. As with most origami books, this one begins with a two-page introduction about folds and the symbols that will be used in the instructions, which are easy to follow even for beginners. Each project kirkus.com

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features a full-color photo of the finished model followed by numbered steps that are both written and visual. Since many of the models share basic body parts, readers will need to flip back and forth, as directions are not repeated for each separate project. And origami paper is a necessity—the teeth, fangs and eyes only pop with two-sided papers.

Those who have caught the origami bug can have some monstrous fun folding and mixing and matching. (Nonfiction. 8-14)

VALLEY OF FIRES

Mitchell, J. Barton Dunne/St. Martin’s (416 pp.) $18.99 | $9.99 e-book | Dec. 2, 2014 978-1-250-00948-7 978-1-250-02071-0 e-book Series: Conquered Earth, 3 Earth might be conquered, but the teens of the western United States haven’t given up completely in this series conclusion.

Teenagers Mira Toombs and Holt Hawkins are back together and able to act on their mutual affection, but their young friend Zoey, called Scion by the alien Assembly, has been abducted by Earth’s conquerors. Mira, Holt and their cohorts want to rescue Zoey and maybe save Earth (or at least keep things from getting worse). To do that, the Wind Traders, the paramilitary group White Helix and the rebel factions of the Assembly will have to work together. Mira heads to the Citadel in San Francisco, the seat of Assembly power, while Holt tries to enlist the pirates of the Menagerie in the fight.

Zoey struggles against her captor; Mira, now psychically connected to the Assembly, fights to keep both coalition and sanity intact; and Holt, who, after a surprise attack by the Assembly, thinks he’s lost Mira for good, comes face to face with the man who’s been hunting him down: Tiberius, leader of the Menagerie. Is there any way this shaky association can prevail against the superior numbers and firepower of the Assembly?

In the conclusion to his science-fantasy trilogy, Mitchell’s heavy description sometimes bogs down the action, but the battles are intense and numerous. Series readers will enjoy it, but newbies should definitely start with the first.

Good if slightly overstuffed post-apocalyptic sci-fi. (Science fiction. 13-18)

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THE CARDINAL AND THE CROW

Moniz, Michael Illus. by Moniz, Michael Simply Read (40 pp.) $16.95 | Nov. 1, 2014 978-1-927018-58-3

A picture-book parable set in the animal world with the themes of bullying and forgiveness.

Old Crow is tormented by the younger, better-looking birds led by the prideful, brilliantly plumaged Cardinal. When Crow finally squawks back, he finds himself ostracized and alone.

Winter arrives, and the other birds fly south, but Cardinal and Crow stay. As Cardinal feeds from the bird feeder located near Crow’s branch, Crow warns him about dangers lurking, but Cardinal doesn’t listen and is caught by a cat. Crow tricks Cat into letting Cardinal go, and when a thankful Cardinal asks Crow how he knew what to do, Crow tells him that “pride and foolishness often roost on the same branch.” Cardinal gets the message, and when the other birds return in the spring, they follow Cardinal’s lead and tease Crow no longer. While interesting enough, the narrative nonetheless is a bit too long; fables benefit from brevity. The illustrations—all full-bleed doublepage spreads—mirror the text. Some have a delicate touch and elegant line, but others look clunky and unfinished; close-ups in particular suffer. The wintry palette limits him already, and by choosing to illustrate his story so literally, Moniz misses an opportunity to create a rich visual experience.

Though the theme’s upstanding, the book as a whole is little more than just pleasant. (Picture book. 4- 7)

ROGUE KNIGHT

Mull, Brandon Aladdin (480 pp.) $17.99 | $10.99 e-book | Nov. 18, 2014 978-1-4424-9703-0 978-1-4424-9705-4 e-book Series: Five Kingdoms, 2 In this second series installment, young Cole enters the second of five kingdoms in the otherworldly Outskirts, is exposed to a second culture and a second flavor of magic, and battles a second monster made of stolen magic as he continues the search for his fellow earthly kidnappees.

In Elloweer, Cole’s flying sword and other magical items acquired in the previous kingdom (Sky Raiders, 2014) don’t work, but gifted illusionists can create disguises and other seemings.

With help from a swelling corps of allies old and new, Cole rescues captive buddy Dalton, participates in a Maze Runner–style game to help Mira rescue one of her royal sisters, and gears up to stop Morgassa, a maddened shapecrafter out to magically possess everyone in the kingdom. In a repetitive round of captures and escapes before the climax, he also runs into the slavers |

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who snatched him and his friends from Arizona, the pigheadedly noble titular knight (who is also using borrowed magic, though he eventually returns it) and an enigmatic godlike illusionist from yet another plane of reality. Sprinkling his wordy, aimless plot with stingier-than-usual bits of banter and silliness, Mull eventually nudges his protagonists into a hard-fought victory, then sends them off to the next kingdom, captive, sister and, more than likely, monster. One can hardly wait.

A flaccid, phoned-in sequel. (Fantasy. 10-13)

STONE COVE ISLAND

Myers, Suzanne Soho Teen (240 pp.) $17.99 | $17.99 e-book | Nov. 11, 2014 978-1-61695-437-6 978-1-61695-438-3 e-book This contemporary thriller opens the morning after a hurricane ravages a Massachusetts island.

The storm’s destroyed homes, flooded businesses, heaved sailboats onto the village green and left residents without power or ferry service.

Orchestrating a community cleanup, Eliza, a lifelong resident and concerned high school senior, finds an odd letter in the island lighthouse, apparently a death threat against a girl named Bess. The letter upsets Eliza’s parents; Bess was her mother’s best friend. Her drowning, some feel, was no accident. Eliza (why is unclear) disregards warnings not to stir up the 25-yearold tragedy, but her investigations are stonewalled. Her classmates don’t know the story, and their parents won’t discuss it.

Charlie, son of prominent island innkeepers, is an exception, but does the mystery interest him or is it just Eliza? Readers will find it hard to care. The struggle of the year-round islanders—rugged, working folk—to recover is a major plot driver but post-9/11 feels jarringly dated. Hurricane Katrina and FEMA are briefly referenced, but the now-familiar vocabulary and tools of emergency planning—first responders, weather radio, social networking, smartphones—are missing. Given the island’s uncoordinated recovery efforts, it’s fortunate that Gloucester, the bustling mainland seaport and apparently miraculously untouched by the hurricane, is just 9 miles away.

A slapdash tale marred by risible errors and erratic pacing. (Mystery. 12-16)

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HIDDEN

Napoli, Donna Jo Paula Wiseman/Simon & Schuster (384 pp.) $17.99 | $10.99 e-book | Dec. 30, 2014 978-1-4424-8300-2 978-1-4424-8303-3 e-book The origin story of the first Norse female pirate is imagined in this leisurely paced companion to Hush: An Irish Princess Tale (2007).

Stolen from her home by Russian slave traders at the age of 8, Irish-born Brigid escapes and finds a home among the Norse, moving from family to family as she searches for her lost sister, Melkorka. “These are good people, but they’re not mine. Time passes far too slowly. I need to grow up and leave; I need to find Mel.” The opening chapters are exciting and fast-paced as Brigid, now known as Alfhild, fights for her very survival after throwing herself off the slave ship and finding an uneasy home with a Norse family that is suspicious of her background. Then the novel shifts into low gear as Alfhild roams the countryside from one settlement to the next, gathering skills and clues to her sister’s whereabouts. It is only in the last quarter of the story, when Alfhild is 15 and commandeering a ship full of formerly enslaved women–turned-pirates that the pace picks up again with thrilling battles and daring rescues. As with all of Napoli’s work, the history is meticulously researched and supported with a detailed bibliography.

Readers who enjoy the journey more than the destination will find much to appreciate in this rambling saga that is an inspired blend of ancient facts and myth. (glossary, postscript, bibliography) (Historical fiction. 12-16)

NOW THAT YOU’RE HERE

Nichols, Amy K. Knopf (304 pp.) $16.99 | $10.99 e-book | $19.99 PLB Dec. 9, 2014 978-0-385-75389-0 978-0-385-75391-3 e-book 978-0-385-75390-6 PLB Series: Duplexity, 1 A science-minded girl falls for a graffiti artist—the catch, though, is that he’s from a parallel universe.

When a bomb goes off in Danny’s dystopian-flavored universe, he’s somehow blasted into Eevee’s reality, which resembles readers’. Danny latches onto Eevee as a familiar face, even though he only met her counterpart in his world briefly—and her personality there is different. This Eevee’s a nerd rather than artist (though the text mathematically demonstrates how close science and art really are). While Danny’s still making sense of what has happened to him, Eevee realizes that he’s in a tough situation and helps him. The two of them work out kirkus.com

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“Raw, real, and easily imagined by any child who’s finally had enough from a close friend, classmate, sister, brother (or even mommy or daddy).” from maple & willow together

the universe swap and with help from Eevee’s best friend and partner in science, Warren, try to puzzle out its mechanics. The chapters alternate between Eevee’s and Danny’s viewpoints.

The organic sweetness of their relationship is tempered by the enthusiastic geekery of the nonromantic storylines. Real mathematical and scientific theories appear, and Eevee and Warren live and breathe cherished icons of nerd culture. While the world-jumping is fantastical, the personalities and characters (fully individual, without reaching trying-too-hard levels of quirkiness) ring true. The ending—an escalation into frantically paced scientific theorizing followed by an abrupt conclusion— is a bit of a letdown, but it leaves room for a sequel.

A debut with great characters and huge nerd appeal.

(Science fiction. 12 & up)

MAPLE & WILLOW TOGETHER

Nichols, Lori Illus. by Nichols, Lori Nancy Paulsen Books (32 pp.) $16.99 | Nov. 4, 2014 978-0-399-16283-1 Maple and Willow do just about everything in sweet, sisterly symbiosis.

Rain and shine, summer and winter, morning and night find the two girls (one bigger, with tight braids, the other littler, with spiky ponytails) together, usually speaking their own language: pig Latin. Pencil drawings on Mylar, enhanced with lots of fuzzy peachy pinks and leafy greens, show the girls transfixed in partnered play, their round heads and dot eyes oriented identically, scrutinizing books, worms, drawings and make-believe fairy houses. Nichols makes clever use of the book’s gutter, subtly and simply representing the invisible bridge that both connects the girls so seamlessly (and here quite beautifully) and also distinguishes them from each other. Maple calls most of the shots, as most big sisters do, and Willow doesn’t mind much, being an easygoing little. But everyone has their limits. “ADMAY!” screams Willow after being told what to do one too many times, and she stomps on Maple’s most special toy. Then comes a big push from Maple, tossing her little sister—slam—to the ground.

Raw, real, and easily imagined by any child who’s finally had enough from a close friend, classmate, sister, brother (or even mommy or daddy). Sisterly love abides, of course, with pig Latin apologies all around.

Strong sibling bonds are perfectly described through spare language and artwork as lush as a forest of maple and willow trees. (Picture book. 2- 6)

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ALL THE BRIGHT PLACES

Niven, Jennifer Knopf (400 pp.) $17.99 | $10.99 e-book | $20.99 PLB | Jan. 6, 2015 978-0-385-75588-7 978-0-385-75590-0 e-book 978-0-385-75589-4 PLB Two struggling teens develop an unlikely relationship in a moving exploration of grief, suicide and young love.

Violet, a writer and member of the popular crowd, has withdrawn from her friends and from school activities since her sister died in a car accident nine months earlier. Finch, known to his classmates as “Theodore Freak,” is famously impulsive and eccentric. Following their meeting in the school bell tower, Finch makes it his mission to re-engage Violet with the world, partially through a school project that sends them to offbeat Indiana landmarks and partially through simple persistence.

(Violet and Finch live, fortunately for all involved, in the sort of romantic universe where his throwing rocks at her window in the middle of the night comes off more charming than stalkeresque.) The teens alternate narration chapter by chapter, each in a unique and well-realized voice. Finch’s self-destructive streak and suicidal impulses are never far from the surface, and the chapters he narrates are interspersed with facts about suicide methods and quotations from Virginia Woolf and poet Cesare Pavese. When the story inevitably turns tragic, a cast of carefully drawn side characters brings to life both the pain of loss and the possibility of moving forward, though some notes of hope are more believable than others.

Many teen novels touch on similar themes, but few do it so memorably. (Fiction. 14 & up)

BLACK KNIGHT

Pike, Christopher Simon Pulse/Simon & Schuster (448 pp.) $19.99 | $9.99 paper | Dec. 2, 2014 978-1-4424-6733-0 978-1-4424-6734-7 paper Series: Witch World, 2 Before new witch Jessie Ralle can get the hang of the parallel-world-hopping double life introduced in Witch World (2012), she’s tossed into a paranormal version of The Hunger Games.

In the normal world, Jessie prepares to start her freshman year at UCLA, while in the witch world, she deals with witch politics following her defeat of Syn. The mysterious Alchemist leads Jessie to believe Syn might not be as dead as presumed.

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testing ground on which six selected witches lead teams in a sole-survivor-wins contest—and Marc’s on her team. While her real-world days are spent battling opponents and making alliances to keep her team alive, during the reprieves offered by her witch-world days, she trains for the Field and seeks answers about it. Many questions are left unanswered to lure readers toward the inevitable third book that the ending sets up. Jessie’s so unlikable (especially in her treatment of her boyfriend) and foolish (she constantly holds back from finishing off opponents who are trying to kill her, enabling them to regroup and try again) that readers will be baffled that so many characters instantly love her.

Those overlooking its heroine will enjoy the plot’s new spin on the familiar tropes. (Paranormal romance. 14 & up)

APOCALYPSE BOW WOW

Proimos III, James Illus. by Proimos Jr., James Bloomsbury (224 pp.) $13.99 | Jan. 6, 2015 978-1-61963-442-8

It would be wrong to say that this book is Waiting for Godot with dogs, despite superficial similarities.

This graphic novel isn’t much like Samuel Beckett’s play, although it is arranged in scenes. The main problem in Godot is existential angst. The main problem in this comic is doorknobs. Dogs can’t open doors, so they have to wait for their owners to bring them food, and the wait is endless, because every human in the world seems to have disappeared after an unnamed disaster. There are lengthy, circular conversations about food: “I’m hungry.” “Aren’t you always hungry?” The comic book has more fight scenes than Godot, which means there are multiple appearances by the book’s funniest character, a flea who’s read Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. He’s always ready to give the dogs cryptic advice: “The opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself.” Unfortunately, whenever he leaves the story, the dialogue turns mundane. Here’s Scene 3 in its entirety: “How come you get to lie on the couch?” Some readers will find the banality hilarious. No other post-apocalyptic novel has this many conversations about furniture. And the black-and-white artwork is endearingly primitive. The dogs are shaped like little sausages or maybe heretofore-undiscovered continents.

Like Godot, this book is both comic and perplexing. Readers with an absurdist sensibility will appreciate the slow pacing. Other children may get tired of waiting.

(Graphic fantasy. 8-12)

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RUDIE NUDIE

Quay, Emma Illus. by Quay, Emma HarperCollins 360 (24 pp.) $17.99 | Dec. 1, 2014 978-0-7333-2335-5 This Australian import features two imps who take a particular pleasure in gamboling about sans covering.

From the title page, where a brother and his older sister fling off their clothes, to the “splishing, splashing, sploshing” of a bath, Quay captures the delight her two heroes feel when down to their birthday suits. Almost immediately, the two dry off and zoom through the house. Gently rhyming text chronicles their sensory adventures as they enjoy the soft rug, the spiky doormat and the dangling fronds of a backyard willow. Their capers concluded, the two return to the loving embrace of their mama “for a cuddle, kiss and hug and squeeze and hold.” Some American readers may try in vain to parse the linguistic logic behind the term “rudie nudie,” a phrase that seems to refer to both juvenile streakers at once. Others (probably grown-ups) may be uncomfortable with the pair’s unapologetic embrace of their nude states. Yet for many children, Quay’s paean to running about in your altogethers will prove irresistible. The accompanying art, calculatedly devoid of penises, done in pencil, paper and Photoshop, charms. More importantly, it clarifies that the book celebrates a childhood experience, separate from the parental gaze.

A bracing burst of joie de vivre, ideal for any rude, nude, naked brood. (Picture book. 2- 6)

PRESIDENTIAL MISADVENTURES Poems That Poke Fun at the Man in Charge

Raczka, Bob Illus. by Burr, Dan E. Roaring Brook (48 pp.) $17.99 | Jan. 27, 2015 978-1-59643-980-1

Presidential portraits in light verse.

Raczka adopts the four-line, limericklike clerihew to skewer each of the U.S. presidents. Assisted by brilliantly expressive pen-and-ink caricatures from award-winning cartoonist Burr, Raczka makes the most of historical trivia, lampooning a wide variety of presidential idiosyncrasies. Sometimes he pokes fun at daily habits: “Fitness nut John Quincy Adams / lived by the words, ‘Up and at ’em.’ / Every morning, right at dawn, / he swam the Potomac with no clothes on.” Other times he highlights significant events: “Rough Rider Theodore Roosevelt / was shot near the heart, which he hardly felt. / The bullet was slowed by a fifty-page speech, / which Teddy still gave. That’s a ‘tough’ you can’t teach.” Throughout, Raczka succeeds in portraying these historic leaders of the free world in a light seldom seen. To add to the fun, an appendix provides brief back stories to the historical tidbits kirkus.com

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inspiring each poem, ranging from educational miscellany like the origin of Barack Obama’s “Yes we can” campaign slogan in the motto of the United Farm Workers Union to such mindless trivia as 340-pound William Howard Taft and his infamous bathtub.

Lighthearted and entertaining, Raczka’s irreverent quatrains show middle graders no figure is too lofty for some poetic play. (Informational poetry. 8-12)

BURNING NATION

Reedy, Trent Levine/Scholastic (432 pp.) $17.99 | $17.99 e-book | Jan. 27, 2015 978-0-545-54873-1 978-0-545-54876-2 e-book Series: Divided We Fall Trilogy, 2 In the second installment of the Divided We Fall trilogy, PFC Daniel Wright continues fighting for the Republic of Idaho against the federal government in what is becoming a second civil war.

Danny Wright blames himself for firing the shot that led to this war, a shot at a protest in Boise that caused fellow National Guardsmen to open fire, killing several protestors. A standoff with the Feds has ensued, and with the Idaho governor’s refusal to enforce federal laws, Idaho has been invaded by federal forces. War makes its inexorable descent into darkness, chaos and brutality, until Danny wonders what kind of person he has become. Innocent people are killed, prisoners are tortured, the death toll mounts, and soon it’s difficult to say what has been won, though it’s easy to see what’s been lost. The media don’t inform, they only obfuscate. Long, italicized excerpts from various news sources inserted between chapters effectively demonstrate how the media can muddle and provoke rather than offer necessary, thoughtful analysis. And by the end, Danny realizes, “We gotta save something of ourselves, of our humanity, if we’re ever going to leave the war behind.”

An action-packed thriller that may well lead readers to further explore the complicated constitutional and political issues it raises. (Thriller. 14 & up)

THE BOY IN THE BLACK SUIT

Reynolds, Jason Atheneum (272 pp.) $17.99 | Jan. 6, 2015 978-1-4424-5950-2

With his mother newly dead, a job in a funeral home somehow becomes the perfect way for Matthew to deal with his crushing grief.

Initially skeptical, he plans to use his early-release senior year program to work at a fried-chicken joint that’s staffed by an entrancing girl with whom he eventually develops a gentle, tenderly depicted |

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relationship. But the funerals intrigue him and then become deeply satisfying; Matthew finds solace in seeing others experiencing his pain. Matthew’s neighbor, Mr. Ray, the funeral director with a sad back story, becomes almost a surrogate father when Matthew’s dad gets drunk and then has an accident. Matthew’s voice is authentic and perceptive as he navigates the initial months without his mom; he’s supported by a believable cast of fully fleshed-out characters. Occasionally, his language waxes poetic, as when he describes the sights and sounds of Brooklyn: “our cement world of trash cans blown into the street, stray cats begging, stoop sitters dressed in fresh sneakers smoking blunts in broad daylight, old ladies sweeping the sidewalk, tired nine-to-fivers walking slowly on the final stretch before home.”

Reynolds writes with a gritty realism that beautifully captures the challenges—and rewards—of growing up in the inner city.

A vivid, satisfying and ultimately upbeat tale of grief, redemption and grace. (Fiction. 11-18)

GATHERING DARKNESS

Rhodes, Morgan Razorbill/Penguin (416 pp.) $18.99 | Dec. 9, 2014 978-1-59514-705-9 Series: Falling Kingdoms, 3

Trust issues reign in the third cloakand-dagger intrigue of the Falling Kingdoms series.

Following Rebel Spring (2013), rebel leader Jonas is recovering from yet another failed mission against evil King Gaius, having lost most of his followers. He’s nearly captured when a mysterious, amazing fighter emerges to rescue him and join Jonas’ cause. Gaius’ heir, Prince Magnus, meanwhile, wavers between his desire for Gaius’ approval and the knowledge that his father’s a liar who ordered the assassination of Magnus’ mother. Princess Cleo decides to bond with her new sister-in-law, the sorceress Lucia, to get closer to the Kindred, magical crystals whose power Cleo hopes to use to retake her kingdom. In the process, she bafflingly starts to care about Lucia, though it’s mostly through telling not showing. Meanwhile, two children of a powerful overseas emperor visit; they’re after the Kindred like everyone else. Characters are frequently stabbed to death with daggers.

Romantically, it’s more of a messy love web than a triangle, giving fans of every couple chances to swoon and hiss. The viewpoint-jumping narration induces too much repetitive recap, slowing the already unevenly paced plot. In the final act, characters calling one another out as traitors start to identify the liars among them, as well as feeling the consequences of trusting and mistrusting the wrong people.

Last-minute twists don’t make up for slow pacing, but they give the next sequel potential. (Fantasy. 13-17)

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STORY THIEVES

Riley, James Aladdin (400 pp.) $16.99 | Jan. 20, 2015 978-1-4814-0919-3

The fourth wall suffers major breaches as young characters from a popular fantasy series and the “real real world” join forces to battle threats in both.

Born of a real mother and a fictional dad, Bethany has been searching for her father ever since he disappeared into a book on her fourth birthday. When classmate Owen sees her materializing out of a copy of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, she unwillingly acquires a gobsmacked ally who persuades her to pick up a finding spell from the cliffhanger scene at the end of Volume 6 in his adored Kiel Gnomenfoot series. Owen tags along to do the unthinkable: change the plot by saving the Dumbledore-ish Magister from death at the hands of mad scientist and archvillain Dr. Verity. Crises snowball as Owen finds himself caught in a climactic battle between Magic and Science in the yet-to-be-published seventh volume. Meanwhile, Bethany is left on this side of the printed page to somehow prevent the Magister, enraged by the revelation that he’s fictional, from freeing all made-up people and creatures and exiling their creators into a storybook to see how they like having no free will. Riley concocts a tasty mix of familiar tropes and truly inventive twists for his Gnomenfoot scenario plus a set of broadly rendered scene stealers for a supporting cast. For a plot, he dishes up a nonstop barrage of situational pickles for his increasingly desperate protagonists.

A droll and clever opener likely to leave readers breathless both with laughter and anticipation. (Fantasy. 10-12)

EWE AND AYE

Ryan, Candace Illus. by Ruble, Stephanie Disney-Hyperion (40 pp.) $17.99 | Dec. 9, 2014 978-1-4231-7591-9 A sporty sheep and an equally sporty primate find a way to realize a common aspiration: to fly.

New readers will find the homophones appealing and the brief text amusing. “Ewe and Aye were different. / Ewe loved wheels, and Aye loved wings.” Though the jacket notes will have to be consulted to understand that Aye is an aye-aye lemur (and perhaps to learn a ewe is a female sheep), once that is established, the resulting wordplay is pretty funny. Ryan’s punning is nicely expanded in Ruble’s zippy illustrations. Ewe seems quite nimble and Aye quite jolly, with their sneakered feet and round goggles making them look like kindred spirits. Ruble’s rich, flat colors and simple, solid cartoon shapes are appropriately comical and keep the action going. The two communicate their plan in pictographs. A double gatefold offers a chance to show the 158

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two splendidly aloft among bubbly clouds: “...there’s nowhere Aye and Ewe can’t fly,” though the first part of that sentence (“And now together”) is positioned awkwardly on the right side of the closed page opening. And their exuberant shout of “Weeeeeeeeee!” seems to break the homonymic theme, though it works anyway. Young readers may want to turn right back to the beginning to see how all the silliness fits together so neatly.

Lots of fun. (Picture book. 3- 6)

THE INQUISITOR’S MARK

Salerni, Dianne K. Harper/HarperCollins (352 pp.) $16.99 | $9.99 e-book | Jan. 27, 2015 978-0-06-227218-8 978-0-06-227220-1 e-book Series: Eighth Day, 2 As a Transitioner, 13-year-old Jax Aubrey is one of an elite group of people who enjoy an eighth day of the week.

While some Transitioners use the eighth day as a playground, others, such as Jax and his friends, understand the gravity of their responsibility. Transitioners must maintain the Eighth-Day Spell, which protects the world from the dangerous Kin. Jax, as the only vassal of the Emrys family, understands this charge more than most. When one of the most deadly Transitioner families claims that he is part of their clan, Jax is torn between his loyalty to friends and ties to family. Combining both modern intrigue and ancient magic, this second volume in what continues to be an inspired series does not disappoint. Salerni expertly handles the charge of expanding the Eighth Day universe as well as deepening her characters. Jax is an endearing mix of heroic and awkward as he struggles with his new identity. Supporting characters offer comic relief, romantic angst and delusions of grandeur. Readers will want to read this series in order, as the summary of the first installment is sparse and confusing.

An exciting blend of Arthurian legend and organized crime. (Fantasy. 8-12)

OUTER SPACE BEDTIME RACE

Sanders, Rob Illus. by Won, Brian Random House (40 pp.) $16.99 | $19.99 PLB | Jan. 27, 2015 978-0-385-38647-0 978-0-375-97354-3 PLB

A melding of fact and fiction strives to present a bedtime lesson on the solar system.

Two earthling children drift off to sleep as the book opens, and successive spreads describe the bedtime routines of sleepy little extraterrestrials on Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. Endpapers underscore the title’s reference to a “race” by depicting the planets as kirkus.com

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“Exciting, one-sentence-per-spread text is reminiscent of a Superman cartoon narration.” from supertruck

first-through-ninth-place medals according to their respective distances from the sun. This seems to refer more to solar years instead of days with regard to the measurement of the time (how long it takes to travel around the sun, versus how long it takes for a day to pass), which muddies the bedtime theme a bit. After all, planetary days are dictated by rotation and vary in length without necessarily corresponding to the annual “race” around the sun. Backmatter entitled “Sleepy Bedtime Planet Factoids” help to ground the text in scientific facts about the planets, but this can’t fully mitigate how stumbling rhymes and twee wordplay grate—“Uranus is a gassy place. / They sleep with masks stuck to each face.” Won’s digital artwork has a retro sensibility. An isolated inclusion of a brown-skinned boy on the second spread smacks of tokenism, since all other representations of human children depict the same Caucasian boys (the children of Neptune display more diversity by comparison).

Stronger bedtime and alien books abound in the universe of children’s literature. (Picture book. 3-5)

A CASTLE FULL OF CATS

Sanderson, Ruth Illus. by Sanderson, Ruth Random House (40 pp.) $16.99 | Jan. 27, 2015 978-0-449-81307-2

Wouldn’t anyone be happy with a castle full of cats?

“Once there was a queen / who kept a castle full of cats. / She loved the pretty ones and the plain ones, / the sweet ones and the brats.” She pampers them with abandon; everyone has fish for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The cats are confident in her love, but they want to win the king’s, too. “They tried their best to please him / in oh-so-clever ways, / and left him charming little gifts / to brighten up his days.”

(These gifts include a mouse in his shoe). They warm his chair in the morning and try to satisfy his love of music and art (with serenades at the piano and claw paintings on the walls). When he becomes upset, the queen just tells him they are only being cats. When he’s had enough, he storms off and returns with his idea of the perfect pet: a drooling bull mastiff! Could this be the end of kitty cat fun and games? Not quite...the cats love the present he’s brought them. Sanderson’s 18th-century king and queen and their adoring brood of pussycats come to life in each detailed, double-page spread watercolor. The palatial rooms and rococo decor will entrance readers, and the purring masses of cats offer plenty of humor for repeat readings Charming, expressive and surprising. (Picture book. 3- 7)

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SUPERTRUCK

Savage, Stephen Illus. by Savage, Stephen Neal Porter/Roaring Brook (32 pp.) $12.99 | Jan. 6, 2015 978-1-59643-821-7 When a blizzard stops the mighty trucks of the city from working, it’s Supertruck to the rescue!

In this metropolis, a cadre of brave trucks fixes electrical lines, extinguishes fires, and tows buses in need. But the garbage truck?

He “just collects the trash.” That is, until a snowstorm hits the town and he becomes Supertruck. With his mighty snow plow, he clears the roads all through the night. And in the bright, clear morning, the other trucks are left to wonder about the identity of the “mighty truck who saved them.” Exciting, one-sentence-per-spread text is reminiscent of a Superman cartoon narration. (This is no coincidence; in his secret identity, Supertruck wears Clark Kent–style glasses.) In combination with crisp graphics and bold colors, the text makes the story accessible to young readers, while the sophisticated digital illustrations will appeal to all. Using a cool palette, Savage exploits shapes and colors to create interesting imagery and atmospheric environments for the truck that show that collecting trash is just as heroic as powerfully plowing through snow.

A serious treat for truck lovers. (Picture book. 2-6)

A LIST OF THINGS THAT DIDN’T KILL ME

Schmidt, Jason Farrar, Straus and Giroux (432 pp.) $18.99 | Jan. 6, 2015 978-0-374-38013-7 A man whose emotionally unstable father moved him from home to home throughout the 1970s and ’80s before dying of AIDS tells his story.

Schmidt was only 3 when his father was arrested on drug charges. In lucid, careful detail, he recalls being packed off to his grandparents’. He explains the drastic difference between their home and his return to life with his dad, exemplified by his father’s reframing of the Christ story taught to young Schmidt by his conservative stepgrandmother: “That’s a government lie. The truth is, Jesus was part alien.” It’s comical in this case, but the chasm that yawns between his dad’s anti-mainstream ideals, which his son often finds sympathetic, and his neglect and unpredictable temper is a theme throughout. Matter-of-fact descriptions of horrific events—his father, while stoned, recalling how he once threw Jason’s mother down a flight of stairs and later tried to kill himself, for example—allow the story to stand for itself, unmarred by melodrama. At bottom, this is an intensely personal narrative that meditates both on the writer’s individual experience of abuse and the social issues at play in being the son of a gay father who becomes ill with HIV in its early days.

Teens and adults who favor memoirs will be fascinated and deeply moved, when they get past the daunting page count. (Memoir. 14 & up) |

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SQUARE CAT ABC

Schoonmaker, Elizabeth Illus. by Schoonmaker, Elizabeth Aladdin (32 pp.) $15.99 | $10.99 e-book | Dec. 2, 2014 978-1-4424-9895-2 978-1-4424-9896-9 e-book An abecedary follow-up to Schoonmaker’s debut, Square Cat (2011).

The titular square cat, Eula, wearing a floppy green-andyellow hat, is busy with shovel and seeds when a portly blueand-pink mouse happens along. Quizzed about her actions, Eula discloses that she’s “Gardening” but that she doesn’t care for Mouse’s favorite, spinach. The sudden appearance of a porcupine (heralded by the words “Kerplunk” and “Kaboom” to fulfill the need for words beginning with K) startles the mouse but doesn’t faze the cat. Mouse’s fears are allayed by Eula’s calm explanation that the prickly animal is her friend and the discovery that the porcupine also likes spinach. Convinced to sample it, Eula still finds the leafy green stuff “Yucky” (“eXtremely” so, in fact), leading Mouse to suggest that she try a “Zucchini, perhaps?” Created in watercolor, gouache, watercolor pencils and ink, the pictures are pleasingly childlike and stand out well against the abundant white space. Unfortunately, they appear static and flat when paired with the staccato text. Letters are emphasized with red print, but varying between upper- and lowercase letters may create confusion, as will a few unusual flourishes in the typeface selected.

Not as “Ick”y as the spinach is in Eula’s estimation but far from Mouse’s opening observation of “Amazing!” (Picture book. 4- 7)

THE STOLEN MOON

Searles, Rachel Feiwel & Friends (368 pp.) $15.99 | Jan. 27, 2015 978-1-250-03880-7 Series: Lost Planet, 2

He’s found a home and located his history (though he still doesn’t remember it), but Chase Garrety is far from safe in this sequel to The Lost Planet (2014).

The children of genetically enhanced supersoldiers, Chase and his sullen younger sister, Lilli, both have powers of their own. Chase can “phase” through solid matter, and Lilli can make copies of herself and project them to other locations. They have to hide their abilities from most of the crew of the Fleet starship Kuyddestor; only the captain (whom Lilli calls uncle), Lt. Maurus and the ship’s doctor know.

A faction within the Federation (which is united with but does not control the Fleet) would like to get its hands on Chase and Lilli. Chase is worried the captain will be hunted down for helping them, especially when the Kuyddestor gets a new assignment: assisting with peace talks between the planets Storros and 160

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Werikos. When Chase discovers an opportunity to learn about his parents, the siblings, Chase’s hacker friend, Parker, and new acquaintance Analora head into danger. The ship’s computer is hacked and then the ship is hijacked, and Chase has no idea whom to trust. Searles’ action- and intrigue-packed sci-fi thriller is peopled with characters who are sometimes confused, sometimes heroic and sometimes brats—that is to say, always genuine. They make realistic choices that are sometimes wrong in a believable and interesting future milieu. In particular, Lilli’s exploitation of her ability makes for great plot points.

Star Trek for young fans of the genre, who’ll be thrilled at the prospect of a sequel. (Science fiction. 9-14)

A COLD LEGACY

Shepherd, Megan Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins (400 pp.) $17.99 | $10.99 e-book | Jan. 27, 2015 978-0-06-212808-9 978-0-06-212810-2 e-book Series: Madman’s Daughter, 3 The mad scientist’s daughter, Juliet Moreau, must flee or fulfill her diabolical biological destiny in the ghoulish series ender.

After releasing monsters to kill three members of the King’s Club, Juliet and her unhappy band of misfits seek refuge in Elizabeth von Stein’s Scottish sanctuary. Edward Prince tries to recover from his self-poisoning and to battle his inner Beast, while Lucy Radcliffe frantically seeks unorthodox methods to save her split-personality lover. Montgomery James and Juliet want to marry—much to the delight of the mostly female and mysteriously mutilated household staff—but both deny and fear that she may be taking up her father’s trade. Elizabeth invites Juliet to study Victor Frankenstein’s rules for reanimation, but even the spectacularly unsettling child-thing, Hensley, cannot dissuade Juliet from (impossibly advanced) scientific experimentation. While Juliet’s ad nauseam struggles over her inheritance may grate, her determination to redefine herself, defend her friends and destroy her foes is riveting. The story employs clichéd Gothic horror elements—castles, odd servants, a Romany girl, a windmill and a windswept countryside— and relies heavily on Frankenstein and The Island of Dr. Moreau, threatening to fall under its predecessors’ shadows. However, Shepherd (albeit anachronistically) addresses gender issues, English-Scottish politics, class divisions and medical ethics, ably intermixing them with horrific, romantic and comedic moments.

Daddy issues aside, a creepy and compelling tale. (Horror. 14-18)

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I LOVE DOGS!

Stainton, Sue Illus. by Staake, Bob Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins (32 pp.) $14.99 | Dec. 31, 2014 978-0-06-117057-7 A little boy travels around a bustling, big-city park observing dogs of many varieties before finally acquiring a dog of his own.

The title page introduces the boy who narrates the story, showing him gazing up at a red sign that orders, “Adopt a dog today!” As the boy wanders through the huge park, he follows multiple identical signs that point the way to a canine adoption center. The short, humorous text describes a diverse canine population through descriptive rhyming pairs, such as “nosy dogs, / cozy dogs” and “naughty dogs, / haughty dogs.” Stylized, computer-generated illustrations capture the antics of the happily romping canines and the eccentricities of their various owners. The main character is sometimes cleverly concealed within the illustrations of the busy park scenes, but he can always be spotted by his tuft of red hair and striped shirt. The illustrations carefully match the descriptions of the dogs, whether spotty, dotty, wrinkly or crinkly, and the bold, jazzy style perks up a story that isn’t particularly original. As always, Staake depicts skin tones of just about every color, including blue, lavender and green; the protagonist has very light brown skin.

Pleasing pups and a vibrant illustration style make this a cheery story for preschoolers or for children just beginning to read on their own. (Picture book. 3- 7)

WE SHOULD HANG OUT SOMETIME Embarrassingly, a True Story

Sundquist, Josh Little, Brown (336 pp.) $18.00 | $9.99 e-book | Dec. 23, 2014 978-0-316-25102-0 978-0-316-25101-3 e-book

A fondness for math plus a self-deprecating sense of humor equals Sundquist’s memoir of dating and self-acceptance.

Who says you won’t use math and science later in life?

Reflecting on spending 25 years without a girlfriend, Paralympic skier Sundquist quirkily applies the scientific method to his attempts at dating from eighth grade to college. Was he rejected because he studied SAT words for fun? Or maybe because he accidentally chopped down a tree with his prosthesis? To test his hypotheses, he interviews each girl and reaches a startling, surprisingly emotional conclusion that gives new meaning to the phrase “It’s not you, it’s me.” This is no dry dissection, however; as Sundquist notes, “fighting emotion with logic is like bringing a calculator to a knife fight.” Nor does it fall into an overtly inspirational, relentlessly cheerful |

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tone. Sundquist is a storyteller—flawed, wry, laid-back and sympathetic. Anyone who’s felt awkward will alternately (or simultaneously) wince and burst out laughing at his earnest misadventures with stalkers, “Close Fast Dancing” and flow charts. Readers will learn about love, self-esteem and even Venn diagrams thanks to tongue-in-cheek visual aids ribbing everything from Sundquist’s limb count to bad pickup lines, but above all, they’ll be rooting for Sundquist to hang out with a girl.

Funny, sympathetic and poignant, Sundquist’s memoir has a high probability of success. (Memoir. 13 & up)

IN REAL LIFE

Tabak, Lawrence Tuttle (288 pp.) $16.99 | Nov. 11, 2014 978-0-8048-4478-9 Seth Gordon balances school, family and a girl against his goal of becoming a professional gamer.

Seth is obsessed with the PC game “Starfare,” enough so to be nationally ranked and well-respected in the gaming community. His real life isn’t so great: He’s got divorced parents always on his case and a love life that’s dead on arrival. The novel starts with his prepping for a national “Starfare” tournament, and the ball keeps rolling from there. A whole lot of stuff happens over the ensuing almost-300 pages, but what’s missing is the crucial “therefore” connections; there’s very little cause and effect here. Seth just goes through the motions while things continually happen to him, which is counterproductive in a book that’s built around a character who is supposed to be actively good at something. A romance is introduced late in the game, but it’s severely undercooked. Seth is such a dolt that the heat never really arrives, and the girl he’s interested in is too aloof and underrepresented for readers to ever really get to know her.

The romance becomes actively insulting to both Seth and readers with the book’s half-baked conclusion. Tertiary characters are erratically developed, doing what the author wants rather than what the story needs. The novel is simply dramatically inert. Readers will wait patiently for disparate elements to clash in interesting, surprising ways, but they never do.

A lengthy book that’s much less than the sum of its pages. (Fiction. 12-16)

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ESCAPE FROM THE LIZZARKS

that her entire society is built on a foundation of lies. What with thin plotting, some angst over which boy she’d rather be kissing and an entirely too easy resolution, this is dystopia lite, although the girl-power message at the end is a nice touch.

Strictly for any fans of the first volume. (timeline, map) (Dystopian romance. 11-15)

TenNapel, Doug Illus. by TenNapel, Doug Graphix/Scholastic (192 pp.) $19.99 | $10.99 paper | $10.99 e-book Jan. 6, 2015 978-0-545-67647-2978-0-545-67646-5 paper 978-0-545-77870-1 e-book Series: NNEWTS, 1

TOP 10 OF EVERYTHING 2015

In a richly imagined amphibian-vs.reptile world, Herk, a small, but plucky Nnewt, must face the viciously villainous Lizzarks after they destroy all that he holds dear.

Herk lives a happy life, spending his days with his beloved mother and magician father, helping them watch over their eggs and playing with his dear sister, Sissy. However, Herk’s legs are a bit too small, and he can’t make it out of the water to walk on land with the other Nnewts. Change comes quickly for Herk when one day a savage band of Lizzarks—a fearsome race of lizardlike creatures—descends upon his home and his village. Transformed by his ingenuity, sheer will and a bit of his own magic, Herk ventures out into the unknown to avenge his family. With this first in a new series, TenNapel has seamlessly transitioned his webcomic into print and masterfully blends just the right amount of exposition and plot to effectively hook new readers. Though a strong first installment, this lacks a bit of the charm his last few books (Tommysaurus Rex, 2013; Cardboard, 2012; Ghostopolis, 2010) have had, though it certainly doesn’t lose any of TenNapel’s trademark brilliant imagination.

A promising first offering; now let’s see where it goes.

(Graphic fantasy. 7-11)

BOUNDARY

Terrell, Heather Illus. by Cortés, Ricardo Soho Teen (277 pp.) $17.99 | $17.99 e-book | Dec. 2, 2014 978-1-61695-199-3 978-1-61695-198-6 e-book Series: Books of Eva, 2

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This collection of top 10 goodies— including “Songs About the Body” and “Amazing Cars for Hire”—has plenty to entertain, if not educate.

Coming at readers like a cross between Man’s Adventure pulp magazines and Ripley’s Believe It or Not, complete with a rainbow-reflective cover and a hefty 320 pages, Terry’s compilation has a pleasing tongue-in-cheek tone—a good number of the lists are “unofficial.” Many of the entries are refreshingly nonhuman, which keeps the book from becoming a celebrity-filled bore. There are plenty of creepy entries from the animal kingdom, including sea lampreys, a great range of natural forces (biggest cave systems, longest coastlines) and a fine gathering of epic structures: buildings with the most ghost sightings, the biggest private house, and did you know there is a cash bar inside CristoRei, the monumental statue of Jesus in Portugal? On each photosplashed page are “Xtreme Facts” and “Off the Chart” addenda.

The sheer busyness of the design—there is not one spare micron of space for eyes to rest on—will endear the book to readers with short attention spans, who might just find themselves looking up after an hour has passed, astonished at their absorption.

For fans of the form, this compendium has plenty of juice. (index) (Reference. 8-14)

DEEP SEA

The second volume of Terrell’s formulaic series picks up right where Relic (2013) left off.

Having succeeded beyond all expectations, Eva is now an Archon as well as a Maiden and must manage both her Betrothal to Jasper and her Archon duties. These involve excavation of the Founder’s ship, last seen by the last female to Test, 150 years ago.

As in the first volume, Eva continues to excel for little discernable reason, which is presumably what makes her the Boundary’s Angakkuq, or chosen one, despite her protestations that she only wants to find her brother’s killer. In a somewhat repetitive and tension-free first-person present-tense narration, Eva relates finding the Tech on board the Genesis, sneaking out at night, and eventually her discovery (assisted by her second love interest) 162

Terry, Paul Firefly (320 pp.) $24.95 | Nov. 1, 2014 978-1-77085-469-7

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Thor, Annika Delacorte (240 pp.) $17.99 | $10.99 e-book | $20.99 PLB Jan. 6, 2015 978-0-385-74385-3 978-0-385-37134-6 e-book 978-0-375-99132-5 PLB The third installment in a proposed quartet of books about Stephie’s experiences as a Jewish refugee in Sweden during World War II that began with Batchelder-winning Faraway Island (2009) and honor book The Lily Pond (2011).

Now Stephie is 16, and her world has become increasingly complex; even her 10-year-old sister, Nellie, finds that it isn’t easy to negotiate two worlds. The contrast between their Jewish heritage and faith with the Pentecostal Christianity of their kirkus.com

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“[Wagner] successfully folds in sensory experiences of the capital city and beyond, along with meditations on love, loss, home and hope, without lecture or contrivance.” from hold tight, don’t let go

hosts is challenging, as is finding funds for high school. Meeting other Jewish refugees awakens Stephie to the broader ethical aspects of the war, and messages from her parents in Theresienstadt help her understand the horrors of the Holocaust. Her friend Vera’s sexual entanglements make her uneasy, and Stephie is frighteningly vulnerable. Her friend May’s family and Miss Bjork, her teacher, come to the island for the summer, allowing readers to meet Miss Bjork’s partner, Janice, an Englishwoman with a frivolous bent. The intricacy of the issues examined here are all built on events and characters introduced in the previous books, making for a rich blend of emotional truths presented in relatively few pages—but readers need to be familiar with those earlier titles to appreciate them.

Readers who have come to love Stephie will be glad to see her world expand. (Historical fiction. 12-16)

HOLD TIGHT, DON’T LET GO

Wagner, Laura Rose Amulet/Abrams (272 pp.) $17.95 | Jan. 6, 2015 978-1-4197-1204-3 Two cousins, close as sisters, survive the Haitian earthquake, but will life ever be the same?

Magdalie and Nadine, two 15-yearold schoolgirls, instantly lose their Manman, their home and their equilibrium to the disaster of January 2010. When Nadine’s father resurfaces and whisks her off to Miami, Magdalie is forced to confront her new life in a relief camp with her uncle-turned–reluctant caregiver, Tonton Elie, and heartbreaking challenges, still holding out hope that Nadine will one day send for her. Eventually Magda’s anger and grief find release via visits to a vodou priestess, the mourning and burial rituals for Manman, and emerging love. Debut novelist Wagner lived in Haiti and wrote her cultural anthropology dissertation on disaster and community in Port-au-Prince. She successfully folds in sensory experiences of the capital city and beyond, along with meditations on love, loss, home and hope, without lecture or contrivance. Readers will find the characters believable and engaging. The title reflects a form of Haitian Creole goodbye that captures the complexity of separation, while the final chapter is Magdalie’s hopeful projection for the future for herself and Nadine, as well as all of Haiti.

An insightful disaster-survival story with far-reaching emotional resonance. (brief history notes, glossary) (Fiction.

14 & up)

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WINNIE The True Story of the Bear Who Inspired Winnie-the-Pooh

Walker, Sally M. Illus. by Voss, Jonathan D. Henry Holt (40 pp.) $17.99 | Jan. 20, 2015 978-0-8050-9715-3

A soldier’s pet becomes famous.

During a short stop on a train ride across Canada during World War I, veterinarian-turned-soldier Harry Colebourn buys an orphaned bear cub he sees at a station. He names her Winnipeg for his company’s hometown; it’s quickly shortened to Winnie. He and his fellow soldiers take her along to England and keep her as a pet until the company leaves to fight in France. Harry finds her a home at the London Zoo, where she entertains generations of children, including young Christopher Robin, who renames his bear after her. Though she mentions A.A. Milne’s book, Walker’s narrative focuses on the bear.

Opening and closing spreads of black-and-white photographs attest to the story’s truth; the misty edges of Voss’ ink-andwatercolor illustrations, from vignettes to full-page spreads, suggest its place in history. Readers see the appealing bear clinging to Harry as a young cub, climbing all over him in a game of “hide-and-seek-biscuits,” looking at them apprehensively over Harry’s shoulder during the ride to the zoo, and, fully grown, being hugged and ridden by children. An author’s note expands on Harry’s story and adds some facts on black bears and Milne’s children’s books.

Ideal for Winnie-the-Pooh fans, this clear, straightforward biography reveals the bear behind the tale. (sources, websites) (Informational picture book. 4-8)

I’M GLAD I DID

Weill, Cynthia Soho (272 pp.) $17.99 | $9.99 e-book | Jan. 27, 2015 978-1-61695-356-0 978-1-61695-357-7 e-book An aspiring songwriter accepts a summer job with a music publisher in 1963 New York City, where she learns about her family, her friends and herself.

Expected to become a lawyer like her mother, father and brother, 16-year-old strong-willed Justice Green, known as JJ, wants to write songs that will “make people believe in possibilities and dreams.” Hired by Good Music Publishing to perform office work in exchange for feedback on her songs, JJ finds herself in the heart of the music-publishing industry, where she encounters her estranged uncle Bernie, an infamous industry mogul who takes her under his wing. When JJ meets Luke Silver, son of Bernie’s deceased former partner, they begin collaborating on a song. After befriending a burned-out |

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“There is much to love about this book besides its plot; Penny’s relationships with other characters add both dimension and humor.” from love -shy

African-American singer named Dulcie Brown, JJ’s devastated when Dulcie dies under suspicious circumstances, prompting her to investigate Dulcie’s past. JJ narrates her story, allowing readers to share her shock when the troubling truth about the twisted relationship that connects Bernie, Luke’s father and Dulcie is finally revealed. Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Weil, songwriter of “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling,” provides period detail about the fledgling rock-’n’-roll industry that adds verisimilitude to JJ and Luke’s surprising journey of discovery.

Mystery, romance and insider music-industry detail distinguish this intriguing 1960s coming-of-age story. (Historical fiction. 12-16)

LOVE-SHY

Wilkinson, Lili Allen & Unwin (326 pp.) $12.99 paper | Dec. 1, 2014 978-1-74237-623-3 A timely exploration of the line between idiosyncrasies and mental illness featuring two Australian teenagers.

Penny thinks she’s got her entire life sorted: She’s a standout on her high school’s swim and debate teams and is the school newspaper’s ace reporter. She owns her considerable ambition proudly and likes to keep things simple, gliding through life as smoothly and cleanly—without any messy peer relationships to gum up the works—as she does through the water. When she discovers a fellow student’s anonymous posts on a forum for love-shy men (so anxious about interactions with women that they avoid relationships altogether), Penny senses a hot story, pursuing it with a doggedness verging on obsession. Hyperdreamy Nick’s love-shyness is rooted in emotional abuse, phobias and deep-seated anxieties that nearly cripple him socially, and Penny determines to help him, Henry Higgins– style. This goes fairly well, but Nick is also unwittingly misogynistic, simultaneously idolizing and hating girls. When Penny finally calls him out on it, it’s a triumphant moment. Along the way, Nick’s behavior forces Penny to see that she is more isolated and friendship-craving than she’d like to admit. There is much to love about this book besides its plot; Penny’s relationships with other characters add both dimension and humor.

Readers will root for these appealing, realistically flawed characters to find their respective happy futures.

(Fiction. 14-17)

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A PLAGUE OF UNICORNS

Yolen, Jane Zonderkidz (208 pp.) $15.99 | Dec. 23, 2014 978-0-310-74648-5

A whimsical fairy tale is stretched rather thin in this low-key novella.

James, heir to the duchy of Callanshire, has spent most of his 8 1/2 years asking nonstop questions, until his loving but exasperated family ships him off to Cranford Abbey to be educated. But the monks are otherwise preoccupied with driving off the unicorns that feast upon their apple orchard. Countless heroes have tried and failed to stop the annual raids; how can one clever and homesick little boy come up with the perfect solution? Yolen (who simply cannot write a graceless sentence) displays her strengths here: poking fun at heroic stereotypes, celebrating curiosity and imagination, and revealing both the homely everydayness of the magical and the wondrous beauty of the ordinary. Each individual vignette—charming, witty, poignant and dreamlike—is perfect in itself; yet stitched together, the awkward shifts in viewpoint and tone betray the narrative’s origin as an expanded short story. It is difficult to identify a target audience: The sophisticated prose and subtle themes are suited for middlegraders, but few are likely to identify with such a young protagonist; this might work best as a classroom (or bedtime) read-aloud.

The handsome design complements Yolen’s prose.

Sweet and engaging but less than the sum of its parts.

(Fantasy. 8-12)

THE LAST CHANGELING

Yolen, Jane; Stemple, Adam Viking (304 pp.) $16.99 | Nov. 28, 2014 978-0-670-01435-4 Series: Seelie Wars, 2

Book 2 in the Seelie Wars fantasy trilogy moves the plot along...a bit.

Prince Aspen , now disguised as a minstrel and calling himself Karl, with former midwife’s apprentice Snail disguised as his companion, is on the run through Seelie lands, hunted by both Seelie and Unseelie armies. Their prickly interpersonal interactions are tempered by a possible growing fondness as well as their mutual need to survive. By chance, they join up with what seems to be a traveling troupe of players whose cast of characters includes dwarf siblings, a man named Professor Odds and a beautiful woman. As the players’ cart lumbers along, unfortunately so does the plot. Action is replaced by the riddles and wordplay with which the professor and dwarfs communicate, and readers may find this more tedious than intriguing. More fey creatures are introduced to the already-plentiful variety that inhabits this world, but instead of adding richness, the overall impression is of an abiding busyness, without enough kirkus.com

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connection. (The animated rug is an exception.) Eventually Snail has a revelation about both herself and the real purpose of the troupe that turns her world on its head. Aspen, meanwhile, confronts his own coming-of-age moment, and by the end, the plot starts moving forward more energetically.

This flattish story needs more depth in both narrative arc and characterization to sparkle. (Fantasy. 8-12)

“One of the great frustrations of a maid of honor’s life is that her time is not her own,” Peggy Fitzroy tells readers ruefully. “That frustration is multiplied when the maid is supposed to be engaged in conspiracy and robbery.” And indeed, Peggy’s attempts to spy for the crown are continually stymied by the semiotics of life in the Princess of Wales’ court. The tricky part of any sequel is to acquaint new readers with the shenanigans that transpired previously without trying the patience of dedicated fans. Zettel dispatches the tension easily, and by the third page, readers are hurtling sympathetically along with Peggy as her espionage leads her yet again headlong into mortal peril.

Much of the humor comes from Peggy’s gaffes and narrow escapes. But when the quick-witted girl sets out to intentionally make a spectacle of herself in order to entrap and defeat an adversary, the results are gratifyingly suspenseful. Along the way, the tale is woven with historical detail to amuse and educate— as with the introduction of tea into court society—but always in service of the plot and never so pedantic as to bog down the swift-paced action.

More thoroughly satisfying mischief and mayhem are afoot. (Historical mystery. 12 & up)

THE WILD CATS OF PIRAN Chronicle One

Young, Scott Alexander Illus. by Chistè, Moreno Young Europe Books (136 pp.) $10.99 paper | Nov. 11, 2014 978-0-9900043-0-1 Series: Wild Cats of Piran, 1

This trilogy opener introduces readers to the Slovenian seaside town of Piran and its colony of feral cats.

Felicia, a short-haired black cat, is queen of the titular wild cats; the colony roams the streets of picturesque, medieval Piran with all the authority of, well, a bunch of cats, aided by the imperfectly described feline power of Magikat. But there is trouble for the wild cats, in the forms of thuggish youth Fisko and his German shepherd, Thor, and a rat general who is drilling his troops preparatory to a takeover. Two separate storylines emerge, as fluffy angora Bezya is catnapped by Fisko, and General Rat prepares for his assault, before converging almost arbitrarily at the end. That should be action aplenty for a slight, 120-page book, but the narrative chops it up and intersperses it with mannered musings on cat psychology, oddly placed forays into back story and loving descriptions of Piran. The avuncular narrator can be quite funny (when Fisko’s sister rescues Bezya from his clutches, the storyteller remarks: “Call it a sense of common decency, if you will. Or even if you won’t”), but just as often the voice bobbles, distracting readers from what plot there is. Chistè’s full-color illustrations add grace notes, recalling animated films in their line and composition.

If Young can get his voice and pacing under control, subsequent volumes might be rather a lot of fun. (Fantasy.

8-12)

interactive e-books FUNNY YUMMY

Alles, Svetlana Illus. by Samsonenko, Olga Funny Yummy Studio $2.99 | Jul. 24, 2014 1.0.2; Aug. 28, 2014 Young readers help six animals get their lunches in this gently interactive storybook app.

“Hi, hedgehog. What nice apples. Bon appetit!” the narrator says. But the poor little guy can’t shake them down from the tree without some help. When readers tap an apple, it falls down so the hedgehog can happily munch away. This storybook presents six short vignettes; in each, readers must help an animal get its lunch, by dropping a fish into the cat’s mouth, scooting cheese closer to the mouse or shaking seeds out for two little birds.

The illustrations are delightful, with a blend of digital art, layered textures and cartoonish characters. Oversized googly eyes add the right touch of humor, and sound effects complement the gentle narration. No printed words appear alongside the story, and the only option is to select autoplay. The interactive animations run smoothly, bringing each character to life. The pace, however, proceeds so deliberately that it lags. In order to teach children “to anticipate the meal and to enjoy the process in steady pace [sic],” readers must tap the food only when it is highlighted. If overeager fingers tap the food before the animal is ready, a little “wait” notice floats up. This has the effect of keeping readers in a passive mode for much of the story.

DANGEROUS DECEPTIONS

Zettel, Sarah HMH Books (384 pp.) $17.99 | Nov. 4, 2014 978-0-544-07409-5 Series: Palace of Spies, 2

In which our delightful heroine, equal parts Eliza Bennett and Veronica Mars, finds herself yet again incommoded by intrigue, villains and reversals of fortune in this sequel to Palace of Spies (2013). |

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It’s a warm, enjoyable experience, but the pace is so measured and controlled that readers might lose interest before everyone gets his or her lunch. (Requires iOS 7 and above.) (iPad storybook app. 2-4)

THE ITSY BITSY SPIDER

Illus. by Emberley, Rebecca; Emberley, Ed Little Bahalia Publishing $2.99 | Aug. 21, 2014 1.0; Aug. 21, 2014 Based on a favorite classic finger rhyme, this app features accompanying music and vocals by jazz musician Peter Black.

Although bright and colorful, this “itsy-bitsy” spider is large and a little scary. Utilizing the Emberleys’ relatively new approach that utilizes eye-poppingly bright colors within designs inflected by Aboriginal influences, the background illustrations consist of a few raindrops, a black hole to represent the drain and a yellow sun. Coloration aside, the spider is laudably realistic, with curved, pointy fangs and at least six eyes visible at all times; though not hairy like a tarantula, it nevertheless looks menacingly predatory and large on the mostly featureless background. Garth Williams didn’t do extreme close-ups of Charlotte for a reason. Readers may be nonplussed (or even happy) to find it on its back looking rather dead as the sun dries up all the rain. Never fear; it lives to go up the spout again anyway.

There is not much here to carry the storyline along for little ones, and in the interactive reading feature, the animation only serves to make this spider even creepier. Unfortunately, kids old enough to enjoy a scary spider will be well past the nursery-song stage.

Give this one a miss. (iPad nursery-rhyme app. 1-4)

TREASURE ISLAND Gemioli Gemioli $2.99 | Aug. 19, 2014 1.0.2; Aug 19, 2014

Robert Louis Stevenson’s tale gets brisk but eye-catching treatment in this app from Gemioli studios.

This application has the visually agreeable appearance of a diorama and fleshy, toothy characters that look as if they have leapt from the pages of a comic book, plus a soundtrack that lilts and crackles. (The characters have no legs, just shoes somehow in synch with the lower torso.

Why is anyone’s guess.) No more than 18 panels—with no more than a couple of sentences per panel—tell Stevenson’s story, from Jim Hawkins’ acquisition of the treasure map to the sail to the island, John Silver’s treachery (no “Long John” here) and castaway Ben Gunn’s sharing of the prize. Fingertip interaction with the screen is minimal—mostly confined to squeaks and yodels by touching the characters, as well as a few items that can be manipulated—so the story really has to pull its own weight.

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This is a lot to ask for a novel shorn to a fistful of words, and it just doesn’t succeed. The artwork, however, is as indulgent as a single-serving, double-fudge sundae. The colors radiate like fruit at its peak and have a confectionary character that feels as though you could smear them if you are not careful.

The story loses too much in its abbreviation to capture the thrill of the book—or an audience—which is why a picture’s being worth a thousand words is its salvation. (iPad storybook app. 4- 7)

HAT MONKEY

Haughton, Chris Illus. by Haughton, Chris Fox & Sheep $2.99 | Aug. 28, 2014 1.2; Aug. 28, 2014 Simple art, bright colors, and a loosejointed, tap-responsive monkey swathed in oversized knitwear give this app particular appeal for digi-tots.

Playtime begins with Monkey entering through a tap-opened door; with further taps, he boogies or gestures invitingly. Having let him in, on subsequent screens viewers can play hide-and-seek, give him high-fives, feed him bananas, join him in belting out jazzy riffs on musical instruments, watch him moonwalk, send him a “text”—by tapping one of four emojilike icons—and other interactions. On alternating monochrome screens, suggestions (“Monkey is hiding. Can you find him?”) supply initial directions in any of 14 languages, among them Dutch, Swedish, Turkish, Russian and four Asiatic languages. Page turns or further actions are cued in the illustrations by Monkey’s pointing or another unobtrusive animation. Playtime ends with a bedtime story (recognizably Haughton’s own Oh No, George, 2012), and then a final tap turns out the light. Sounds and motions throughout are lively without being startling or frenetic.

A fine addition to any toddler’s virtual shelf, next to the likes of Lazy Larry Lizard (2011) and Sandra Boynton’s e-board books. (Requires iOS 7 and above.) (iPad toddler app.

1-3)

THE FOUR SEASONS A Vivaldi Storybook Infinite Fermata LLC Infinite Fermata LLC $4.99 | Aug. 24, 2014 1.0; Aug. 24, 2014

An interactive storybook introduces a much-beloved classical music score.

As nature takes its charming course, Vivaldi’s classic masterpiece underscores its rhythms as none other does, which is why parents of toddlers, preschoolers and early readers will be captivated by this winsome marriage of story and song. A playful but simple narrative engages without kirkus.com

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“The fog is everywhere here, as in San Francisco it ought to be, lending mystery to the story’s progression as it gets soupier and soupier.” from fiona & the fog

THE TREE THAT REFUSED TO SHED

overwhelming, as creatures great and small make the most of the seasons. Readers can awaken the mole, frog, turtle, worm and badger from their “Winter” nocturne and practice counting the goslings swimming behind mother goose in “Spring.”

They can tap the sunflowers to release pollen for bees to gather in the sweltering “Summer,” shake acorns out of the tree for squirrels (one on a skateboard) in “Autumn” and tap the owls into flight for “Winter,” among other delights. Vibrant papercollage illustrations depict the action without competing with the accessibly scaled-back Vivaldi score, from which a new layer can be summoned in certain scenes. Is it the oboe or flute one hears when tapping the graceful, southbound geese? Either way, it’s beautiful. Without a read-to-me option, a page index or a go-back button, the seasonal effects can drag for curious, attention-waning toddlers, and some of the interactions are on the slow side.

Bobbles aside, this Vivaldi primer is still worth the change. (iPad storybook app. 2-5)

Yap, Stephanie Illus. by Yap, Stephanie Striding Bird Productions $1.99 | Aug. 20, 2014 1.0.1; Aug. 29, 2014

A stubborn tree gets a perfunctory lesson about impermanence.

It would be interesting to know how many developers actually look at a children’s-book app as an amalgam of effective components. Interactive storybooks aren’t just about the concept; by nature, they’re also an experience, and the quality of that experience depends on the bundle. This app is a good case in point. The narrative is original and has the potential to be inspirational, but its telling is a bit dry and suffers from profoundly ineffective pacing. The tree’s unsuccessful struggle to preserve its leaves, for example, goes on for seven continuous screens. Then, on the eighth, readers see a sapling where the once obstinate tree had been. The end. There are very few interactive elements; the most interesting is the ability to move three tiny birds around in perfect synchronization. Gusts of wind produce ghostlike breezes that fly through the air like linear tumbleweeds. Optional narration must be summoned on each page with a tap. The app’s most glaring liability is the musical accompaniment, which drones on at a distracting volume without the option to turn it down or off.

This story may offer solid tutorials on the seasons and the existential benefits of detachment (pun intended), but its literary and technical vessels could use some work.

(Requires iOS 6 and above.) (iPad storybook app. 4- 7)

FIONA & THE FOG

Poor, William Illus. by Poor, William William Poor $1.99 | Sep. 3, 2014 1.0.0; Sep. 3, 2014

A blend of photos and animated elements showcases Poor’s story of a girl pursuing a windblown scarf, much as a boy did a red balloon, and experiencing a great city in the process.

A mischievous wind with inspired ulterior motives snatches a girl’s scarf during a foggy day in San Francisco when it hears her complain that she is bored. As a silent messenger, it takes her on a tour of her great city and introduces her to some of its citizens: a pelican that cares for a lighthouse, one of the city’s fabled parrot escapees, sea lions and a red crab that lives under a pier. They are an amiable crew who are familiar with the wind’s curious behavior by now, and each pressures Fiona on to the next stop, which ends with a tattered rope ladder leading through the fog above to a grand, panoptical view. The fog is everywhere here, as in San Francisco it ought to be, lending mystery to the story’s progression as it gets soupier and soupier.

The girl’s movement through the city precincts is peaceful but absorbing, and the end is quietly satisfying. The story’s backgrounds are actual photos of the city, the animated elements infusing them with lightness and a trompe l’oeil quality.

The view is lovely, but it is Fiona’s Homeric voyage through the city that will find readers charged with their own wanderlust. (Requires iOS 7 and above.) (Picture book.

4-8)

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MAGGIE MALONE GETS THE ROYAL TREATMENT

IN THE AFTER LIGHT

McCarthy, Jenna; Evans, Carolyn Sourcebooks Jabberwocky | (208 pp.) $6.99 paper | Nov. 4, 2014 978-1-4022-9309-2 paper Maggie Malone, 2 (Fantasy. 9-12)

THE SPELL BIND

Mlynowski, Sarah Scholastic | (176 pp.) $5.99 paper | Oct. 21, 2014 978-0-545-41572-9 paper Whatever After, 4 (Fantasy. 8-12)

Bracken, Alexandra Hyperion | (544 pp.) $18.99 | Oct. 28, 2014 978-1-4231-5752-6 Darkest Minds, 3 (Dystopian thriller. 14 & up)

DREAM ON

Brauner, Barbara; Mattson, James Iver Illus. by Halpin, Abigail Disney Hyperion | (256 pp.) $16.99 | Oct. 28, 2014 978-1-4231-6476-0 Oh My Godmother, 3 (Fantasy. 9-12)

THE RAINBOW SERPENT

Pryce, Trevor with Naftali, Joel Illus. by Greene, Sanford Amulet/Abrams | (288 pp.) $15.95 | Oct. 14, 2014 978-1-4197-1309-5 Kulipari, 2 (Fantasy. 8-12)

THE SORCERER HEIR

Chima, Cinda Williams Hyperion | (560 pp.) $18.99 | Oct. 21, 2014 978-1-4231-4435-9 Heir Chronicles, 5 (Fantasy. 12 & up)

ADVENTURES IN FLATFROST

Quinn, Jordan Illus. by McPhillips, Robert Little Simon | (128 pp.) $16.99 | $5.99 paper | Oct. 7, 2014 978-1-4814-1389-3 978-1-4814-1388-6 paper Kingdom of Wrenly, 5 (Fantasy. 5-9)

EMERGENT

Cohn, Rachel Hyperion | (288 pp.) $17.99 | Oct. 7, 2014 978-1-4231-5720-5 Beta, 2 (Science fiction. 14 & up)

HANNAH’S BRIGHT STAR

Schroeder, Lisa Scholastic | (192 pp.) $5.99 paper | Oct. 21, 2014 978-0-545-60379-9 paper Charmed Life, 4 (Fantasy. 8-12)

HEROES ON THE SIDE

Marko, Cyndi Illus. by Marko, Cyndi Branches/Scholastic | (80 pp.) $15.99 | $4.99 paper | Nov. 25, 2014 978-0-545-61077-3 978-0-545-61074-2 paper Kung Pow Chicken, 4 (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 5-7)

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SAVING THE SUN DRAGON

West, Tracey Illus. by Howells, Graham Branches/Scholastic | (96 pp.) $15.99 | $4.99 paper | Nov. 25, 2014 978-0-545-64626-0 978-0-545-64625-3 paper Dragon Masters, 2 (Fantasy. 6-8) &

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indie UNLEASHED A New Paradigm of African Trade with the World

These titles earned the Kirkus Star: THE CELLAR by Katherine Lo........................................................... 175

Akhile Sr., John I. Word Power Publishing Company LLC $7.99 e-book | Aug. 13, 2014

A LAYER OF DARKNESS by R.A. Niles...........................................179 ELEVEN by Tom Rogers......................................................................180

A comprehensive strategy for encouraging economic development in African nations.

In this business book, Akhile (Compensatory Trade Strategy, 2006) takes the reader on a detailed journey through the problems that have hampered economic development in much of Africa and the concrete steps that can overcome many of the hurdles. The analysis draws heavily on the contrasting success of the “Asian Tigers,” particularly Singapore, Japan and South Korea, as instances of successful economies in countries that were once under the control of Western nations. Akhile guides the reader through a history that may be unfamiliar to many, from the 19th-century Opium Wars to the 1961 assassination of Patrice Lumumba, connecting each element to his central theme of building vibrant and sustainable African economies.

Numerous charts and tables provide data to back up Akhile’s analysis, but despite the number of illustrations, the text remains dense, with sentences like “Let us be unequivocally clear that while there is probably a very miniscule minority of altruistic-minded people involved in the charade of non-profits in African countries, the vast business enterprise of aid is not about how to help African people; rather it is to ensure the continued existence of the various and sundry organizations through ever competitive struggles for donations, government contracts and subsidies” throughout. The indictment of foreign aid and nongovernmental organizations is well-developed, as is Akhile’s prescription for developing a viable export-driven economic base that goes beyond the raw materials that African countries have tended to rely on. Although readers who prefer a broader approach to development may find the book limited in its strictly economic focus—the political repression that accompanied growth in Taiwan and Singapore is not mentioned—they will likely find it a useful tool for the aspects of growth it does address. Frequent citations and a detailed list of sources add to the solidity of Akhile’s study and situate the book within the context of other examinations of economic development and prescriptions for growth.

A thorough and well-reasoned, if wordy, exploration of the possibilities for economic growth in Africa.

THE INSIDER’S GUIDE TO A CAREER IN BOOK PUBLISHING

by Carin Siegfried............................................................................... 181 A LAYER OF DARKNESS An Andrew Johnson Novel

Niles, R.A. Amazon Digital Services (282 pp.) $2.99 e-book Jun. 17, 2014 978-1-4681-5981-3

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niche books: low risk, high returns The Other Son

One of the benefits of the boom in self-publishing is that excellent, narrowly focused books with potentially limited markets don’t have to languish in a publisher’s slush pile. Carin Siegfried, a veteran of traditional publishing, knew that her book, The Insider’s Guide to a Career in Book Publishing, which got a Kirkus Star, had “a small and very specific market, and…figured it was probably too small for a major publisher,” she says, so she opted to publish it herself.

The Insider’s Guide is a well-organized overview of publishing and job options within the industry. It covers how to become an editor—which, while a popular goal, often involves “the least pay and most work”—as well as a subsidiary rights representative, salesperson, art designer, copy editor and more.

Now that Siegfried has gone through the self-publishing process herself, she Carin Siegfried notes it was a “ton of work” and strongly suggests hiring a professional editor, copy editor, proofreader and designer, as well as a professional publicist/marketer. “Check out what is being published by the traditional publishers, and try to make your book look like it belongs, from trim size to jacket treatment to proper cover copy,” says Siegfried. “Be sure your printer/selfpublisher distributes to a major wholesaler (Ingram or Baker & Taylor). You need a marketing/publicity plan months in advance. And be prepared for this not to be a cheap process, if done correctly.”

The forecast is looking good for indie authors, says Siegfried. “I think selfpublishing’s biggest influence on traditional publishing is by showing the sales potential in genres that were considered small and niche, such as urban lit and erotica. Traditional publishers now are making more inroads into those genres, so more books are available (and in more outlets) for the fans of those genres. I think we will continue to see groundbreaking trends first in self-publishing, where the risk is low and the potential is high.” —K.S.

Avidano, Allan Manuscript

In this compelling debut sci-fi pastiche of existential crises, millennia-old religious prophecies and modern-day fanaticism, the supernatural aspirations of a Muslim scientist collide with the modest, earthly aims of a secular American couple.

When the empires of reason and faith collide, the authority of each is called into question. Sean and Maddy begin to build a life together in New York City, but their endeavor is complicated by Maddy’s choice, prior to meeting Sean, to become pregnant via artificial insemination. Unbeknownst to her, however, the child she carries—Victor, whose destiny the second half of the novel traces—is a beacon of paradigm-shifting research: not just a clone, but the human clone of Jesus Christ, whose DNA was salvaged from Christian relics by the brilliant but unstable Dr. Khodadad Jal. Raised a faithful Muslim, Jal is tormented by the dilemma posed by the confrontation of religion and science. His destructive answer to the fate of mankind—he wants to create an apocalypse—calls him to study advanced embryology and to seek out (and deceive) rich donors. After securing Victor’s birth and surviving a murder attempt by a crazed colleague, Jal envisions the realization of his grand scheme with a nuclear holocaust, a manufactured apocalypse led by Victor, the supposed second coming of Christ. Masterfully told from its benign beginnings to its tragic end in a Jerusalem cemetery, this novel charts the intersection of men and women made anxious by the question of life’s purpose and its seemingly paltry answers. Fantastic in its arc, the story nonetheless roots itself in moments of genuine psychological discord, revealing itself via anachronistic chapters that flit between past and future.

This is a fable of sorts for the modern world, spanning the events of 9/11 and the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict as well as the doctrines of Hegelian philosophy and Islamic theology. A study in the ethical limits of science, the novel also traces the blurry line that divides sanity from insanity, as Jal’s views degenerate from philosophically reasoned convictions to sadism and self-delusion.

A confident mix of high-minded intellectual arguments and fast-paced fiction.

RUDY’S BLUEPRINT

Blunce, Rudy CreateSpace (192 pp.) $15.00 paper | $4.99 e-book Mar. 7, 2014 978-1-4811-6906-6 A brief self-help volume that covers the basics of life in a humorous, no-nonsense manner.

Blunce, formerly a workaholic investment banker, has plenty of candid advice for living a happy, emotionally healthy life. His book is broken

Karen Schechner is the senior Indie editor at Kirkus Reviews.

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into chapters corresponding to potential readers’ teenage years, the decades beyond and the challenges unique to the various stages. Early on, he emphasizes respect for oneself (i.e., maintaining good hygiene, getting an education) and for society (paying taxes gladly, drinking responsibly). Throughout, he adds bulletpoint specifics and “offhand bits of advice.” His discussion of life in your 20s (“The Go-Go Years”) mainly covers—for the purpose of broad appeal—graduating from college, getting an office job and navigating the perils of the workplace. Subsequent chapters, “30 to 40—The Making It Years” and “50 to 60—The Worldly Years,” detail practical ways to raise children, buy property, see the world, retire and acquire the proper health care. Blunce includes funny, insightful visuals (an image about “the chains that hold us” shows a horse tied to a plastic chair) and famous quotes (“It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men”). More controversial subjects appear, like religion’s negative effect on the world and the emptiness of accumulating wealth (rather than earning and enjoying it). For his debut, Blunce boldly dives into the self-improvement arena, offering a refreshing, down-to-earth work that isn’t padded with anecdotes. There’s also unabashed playfulness; in a segment on dressing for a job interview, Blunce says, “If your suit exudes ‘loser,’ your interview might as well have the sound of a toilet flushing in the background.” He also admits to being a Type A personality, and his advice may not appeal to those seeking a more creative, reflective life. His finale is a frank denunciation of religion as an unnecessary barrier toward living in global harmony. Luckily, Blunce remains jovial even here, sending us off with the message, “I love you...see you soon.”

A rousing pamphlet that deserves to spread like wildfire.

American public’s aversion to joining the war effort before it’s too late. Brady undergoes a dizzying ascension, during which he meets such historical giants as Winston Churchill and Josef Stalin, but he eventually becomes a man who knows too much—and his minimal conscience ends up getting him in trouble with the powers that be. Later, in 1953, Smithsonian researcher Harriet Gallatin discovers Brady living under a pseudonym in a veteran’s home, where he tells her a shocking tale: Roosevelt, he says, “schemed to bring us into war with Japan, and even knew that their fleet was en route to Pearl Harbor.” As a result, she soon finds herself in danger as well. Carroll believably brings both historical and fictional figures to life while slowly and skillfully unreeling Brady’s story, which shifts back and forth between World War II and the early 1950s. The fast-paced story successfully juxtaposes Brady’s own first-person remembrances and Gallatin’s initially skeptical analysis of the man (“Brady said that most of the recent history I knew was bunk”). Overall, the author’s journalistic style develops a detailed portrait of an unlucky man caught up in events far beyond his control.

A riveting adventure that effectively explores the idea that history is written by the winners.

Blood Line Granger Spy Novel

Davis, John J. Simon & Winter, Inc. (251 pp.) $15.95 paper | $7.99 e-book Oct. 14, 2014 978-0-9903144-1-7

THE GREAT LIARS They knew he knew. Too bad for him.

This debut thriller finds an entire family on the run from those who would sell bleeding-edge technology to the highest bidder.

In Park City, Georgia, Ron and Valerie Granger work for INESCO, a family-owned research company that develops technology for the U.S. government. Ron also happens to be an inactive CIA operative, while Valerie belonged to the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency. They believe they’ve set their spy careers aside to raise their teen daughter, Leecy, but a home invasion may mean otherwise. After disabling one intruder and killing the other, the Grangers meet with FBI agent John Porter. He informs them that one of the intruders is a former INESCO employee, and perhaps they wanted to kidnap Leecy and leverage her for obtaining vital Department of Defense proposals. The Grangers disagree with Porter’s theory, maintaining that INESCO projects proceed under a shroud of coded secrecy. Later, when Leecy overhears sensitive information, the Grangers must run from the FBI and into the safekeeping of Ron’s former handler, Tammy Wakefield. With her help, they realize that INESCO has a greedy mole and that Ron’s legendary reputation as a violent, take-no-prisoners operative is their best hope for protecting everyone. In his aptly titled debut, author Davis does an excellent job laying the groundwork for upcoming volumes in the series. Ron and Valerie feel like true partners and parents, and Leecy is a believable teen (“my life is on that phone!”). Clever scenes also have Ron playing

Carroll, Jerry Jay Self (360 pp.) $14.00 paper | $9.99 e-book Feb. 1, 2014 978-0-9898269-0-7

Veteran novelist Carroll (Dog Eat Dog, 1999, etc.) offers a heady brew of military history and conspiracy theory that will appeal to aficionados of both.The Pulitzer Prize–nominated journalist smartly centers this historical novel, an amalgam of fact and supposition, on a charming rogue.

Lowell Brady is a junior naval officer looking for a safe place to ride out the seemingly inevitable World War II. As the son of a wealthy mother and the stepson of an influential senator, he sees it as his natural-born right; years later, he says, “[Y]ou run into men who say they want to be ‘tested’ in battle, but...ignorance explains the greater part of that. Being in a situation where heroes are made is damned poor planning in the first place.” His henpecked stepfather was a confidant of President Franklin Roosevelt, and FDR decides to use young Brady’s natural proclivity as a gossip to gather information at the highest levels of American and British societies. The president wants to find a way to overcome the |

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There’s a Bug in My Blossom

with his legend as a one-man Native American kill squad who only used a knife and a tomahawk. Valerie’s past as a Mossad assassin is more explicitly referenced; readers learn that she helped get Boris Yeltsin elected. As the tightly written plot advances, however, the Grangers’ familial bonds are so pervasive that it’s hard to feel the real danger. And though the details of CIA operations and modern technology are impressive, the narrative loses some bite when everyone stops to explain things to Leecy. Nevertheless, Davis sets a solid foundation for more adventures.

Sharply written and starring characters readers will be happy to meet again.

Donaho, J.C. CreateSpace (54 pp.) $14.99 paper | May 23, 2014 978-1-4936-0406-7 Get a closer view of a variety of insects and plants in this bright, engaging children’s book.

Featuring a handful of animals, including a cat who implores readers to explore the insects and plants around them, this educational book dives quickly into descriptions of common and not-so-common crawling creatures—carpenter bees and their wood-boring habits, grasshoppers, wolf spiders, walking sticks and even predatory lizards. There are also discussions on the effects of pesticides on insects, dying bee colonies, how bugs help pollinate plants, butterfly coloration and more—overall, a well-rounded look at flora-related fauna.

Donaho’s debut children’s book boasts clear, brightly colored photos that immerse readers in the insects’ habitats. Vibrant and engaging, they add a special touch. The prose, however, may be a bit too advanced for younger children, who will nonetheless enjoy the pictures of bugs; accompanied by an adult, grade schoolers will still learn a great deal. Easy questions located on the photo pages mesh nicely with the more advanced writing on the text pages. The only real weak spots are the bookending quotes from various animals (ranging from an exotic primate to an ordinary squirrel) that don’t add much: “Wow! Did you see all those bugs?” “Yes, and all we had to do was look!” While children will love the animal pictures, more insect-related photos interspersed among the text would have been a welcome addition. The book also offers tips on how to look for insects in flowers in readers’ own backyards—a nice inclusion sure to inspire some afternoon exploring.

One part education and one part entertainment, this vibrant book will delight readers of all ages, from bug beginners to almost-entomologists.

THE LITTLE GIRL’S LITTLE BOOK OF ART Dixon, Kathryn Bellagio Press (128 pp.) $24.95 | May 19, 2014 978-1-62732-013-9

An irresistible introduction to the world of fine art for kids 5 and up.

Intrigued by an art print in her childhood bedroom, a young Dixon (I Love Being a Girl, 2014, etc.) spent hours wondering about the stories behind the pictures: “My curiosity was piqued, not only about the little girl that Renoir painted, but by the creative process.” Encouraging her young readers “to dream and to marvel and to appreciate not only the act of creativity but a new way of seeing the world,” Dixon presents 30 painters and engaging samples of their work. With artists arranged in birth order, the format—the artist’s biographical information and portrait with a short essay appear on a single page, followed by three paintings identified by title, date, size and current location—works well to present a range, from the old masters (da Vinci leads off, followed by Titian and Rembrandt) through modern artists (Munch, Modigliani and Klee) and with less familiar names along the way (Corot, Alman-Tadema, Czech artist Mucha). The high-quality illustrations are interesting and varied. Along with the anticipated Mona Lisa and Girl with a Pearl Earring are less commonly viewed gems, almost all celebrating the feminine, although the occasional boy or still life can be found. The art selections alone are noteworthy, but the essays bring the book to life; brief but intriguing, each offers personal detail, definition, and odd and humanizing details.

For example, the rule breaker Courbet used big canvases for painting common lives, and Manet painted a few strokes on a Morisot work without her permission. Most of the essays pose straightforward questions or refer to other artists in the book and encourage readers to see the relationships among painters, paintings and audience. But there is nothing dry about this presentation—young readers are encouraged to wonder about and just plain enjoy the works. Minor discrepancies (a Gonzales piece is referred to as both Nanny and Baby and Nanny and Child) do not detract.

An engaging, interactive guide to museum-quality visual art.

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MY OLYMPIC STORY Rome 1960

Farrell, Jeff Vintage Team Press (155 pp.) $13.99 paper 978-0-692-27619-8 A debut memoir of a swimmer who recovered from surgery to compete in the 1960 Olympics.

Six days before the U.S. Olympic trials for the 1960 Games in Rome, Farrell, then the fastest swimmer in the world, underwent an emergency appendectomy. His dreams of making the U.S. team, let alone winning Olympic gold, appeared to be shattered. This stirring account details how he defied the medical odds and managed to return to the water in time for the trials. “I had accomplished a |

“Grote, a psychologist, offers a collection of 12 short stories in which madness—and the incidents that trigger it—runs like a silent undertow.” from death, madness and a mess of dogs

virtual athletic miracle,” he recalls, and he would go on to win two gold medals in relay events—a testament, he says, to his “strange combination of physical and mental distress, despair, doubt, hope, belief and finally courage to accomplish my goal.” When he initially woke up from the anesthesia, his understanding of what had happened to him had reduced him to tears: “[T]he surgeon had removed not only my appendix, but also my dream of winning a gold medal in the Rome Olympics.” But only two days after the surgery, he was walking around in a pool in the hospital basement, his 5-inch incision protected by a wraparound bandage. Before his first race at the trials, “a girl placed a small crucifix from her rosary on my starting block,” expressing what the author took to be “fear, faith, and hope.” Farrell effectively interweaves his story of miraculous recovery with engaging recollections of his swimming career: As a youth, he trained in a 16-yard pool in Wichita, Kansas, that had no lanes or markings. He also looks at the evolution of his sport; at the time he competed, for example, there were no goggles, forcing some swimmers to rub Vaseline on their eyeballs to reduce the irritation from chlorine. Although Farrell missed out on his best event, the 100-yard freestyle, in Rome, his success still provides a powerful coda. Readers will leave with the pointed lesson that “it really wasn’t just about winning....[F]or me, it was also about moving forward in life.”

Entertaining recollections of a successful swimming career.

specific, recommended steps to build a brand. A chapter targeting millennials—people born between the early 1980s and the early 2000s—is also highly useful, as the author’s own survey indicates that 71 percent of millennials are “not sure having a personal website is worth the expense.” Also intriguing is the author’s commentary on how one’s branding changes in relation to one’s career trajectory. Throughout, the author is careful to acknowledge and reference the work of others whose ideas influenced his own. Although the book can be somewhat repetitive at times, it boasts insightful observations, complemented by instructive charts and illustrations.

A thoughtful addition to branding literature.

DEATH, MADNESS AND A MESS OF DOGS Grote, Frances Rule Bender Press (184 pp.) $10.95 paper | Sep. 15, 2014 978-0-9833341-2-5

Insanity runs through many of the tales in Grote’s (Fire in the Henhouse, 2011) second work of fiction.

The mind is fragile and unpredictable. What might distract one man, making him do unspeakable things, could be brushed harmlessly off the shoulders of another. Grote, a psychologist, offers a collection of 12 short stories in which madness—and the incidents that trigger it—runs like a silent undertow. In the title story, a woman is unhinged by a new baby and the loss of a mother; in the outstanding “Dancing With Stuart,” a woman’s anger and a boy’s rage tip a man over the edge. “Redemption Center” focuses on incidents that warped a woman’s thinking and attitude, making her act in certain ways. “The Five Senses,” “A Cup of Tea” and “Final Rest Stop” also have insanity down the middle but in more twisted ways. Grote’s compelling batch of stories contains hits and misses. When Grote veers away from depicting real people and events and tries fantasy, the stories falter, as with “Philly Folk” and “My Vampire Confession,” both of which try too hard to be clever. “Mass Pike” has potential, but its unoriginal robots-running-amok theme quickly becomes tedious. In several stories, the author unnecessarily tries to fashion surprise endings. Where she excels, however, is in her depictions of ordinary people dealing with the ordinary situations of life—no trick ending required. Two of the stories, “Triangle in the Square” and “Anne/Marie,” do just that, and even though the endings are telegraphed early on, the stories will hold the reader’s attention because of the honesty and familiarity of the characters and their interactions.

More hits than misses in this promising collection from a talented newcomer.

ONLINE PERSONAL BRAND Skill Set, Aura, and Identity Frischmann, Ryan M. CreateSpace (170 pp.) $8.99 paper | $2.99 e-book May 31, 2014 978-1-5003-7098-5

A website developer offers a fresh perspective on controlling one’s online image.

In this timely book, Frischmann (A Skills-Based Approach to Developing a Career, 2013) points out that “you already have an online personal brand, whether or not you take control of it.” He recommends making one’s own website the core of this brand, but he goes beyond this commonly accepted, basic notion; he also suggests a comprehensive approach to creating a skill set, an aura and an identity. The book describes each of these three elements in considerable detail and demonstrates how they interrelate. His discussion of “aura” is particularly interesting, as it addresses specifically “how others perceive you after they review content about you online.” Frischmann talks at length about the importance of managing one’s identity across the entire Internet, as well. His coverage of social media networks is fairly standard fare, but he offers some excellent advice about making a good “online first impression,” which, he writes, “is the intersection of an aura and identity.” He also gives appropriate attention to the “dubious delineation” between one’s personal and professional online presences. One of the more valuable chapters offers a comprehensive basic framework of 12 |

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THE VALUE OF DISCRETION

In this warm, wise and often witty book, debut author Hulton offers clearheaded insights and methods she’s learned while counseling exhausted, perplexed parents as a mental health counselor and psychoanalyst. This six-part handbook’s most valuable attributes are its lack of condescension and its nonauthoritarian mission “to teach all parents to trust empathy and in so doing to break out of Parent Fatigue Syndrome.” That syndrome, she writes, is caused by relying on “conventional wisdom”—the “spare the rod, spoil the child” tradition and trendy contemporary advice that stresses achievements and can make parents feel like failures. Concise, explicit information will enable readers to develop individualized practices. The author discusses children’s essential needs, developmental milestones (such as attachment and breaking away) and ideal school experiences (such as the individualistic Reggio Emilia approach). She also includes practical, fun therapy methods (such as sock puppets and sand trays), plus an index. “There really is no one way to parent,” claims Hulton, and she sprinkles generous references throughout to works by child development experts such as Haim Ginott, Robert Karen, T. Berry Brazelton, Penelope Leach and Maggie Scarf. Mindful of recent school shootings, she stresses the importance of raising compassionate global citizens and recognizing the societal danger of “empathy erosion.” Empathy, she says, doesn’t mean excusing or accepting bad behavior: “It is the reflection of another’s emotional experience so that they feel understood—understood well enough to feel that they are part of the world in which they live so that alienation does not become a slowly spreading cancer in their soul.”

A highly recommended work that shows that parenting can be a rewarding lifetime investment that pays great dividends not only to caregivers, but also to society.

Hatfield, T.K. CreateSpace (166 pp.) $10.00 paper | $9.99 e-book Jun. 25, 2014 978-1-4973-3691-9

A seaside mystery helps a grieving investigator get back in the game.

Sixty is the new sexy in Hatfield’s second mystery featuring Carla Harper (Tumbling in the Downdrift, 2013). Many of the beautiful Gulf-front homes in the planned community of Seaside are owned by wealthy semiretired men “and their current wives (at least second, and in some cases third).” Hollis Tyler is one of those men, and Alicia’s one of those current wives.

The two have a standing Friday afternoon appointment on their patio to get frisky al fresco with their masseuses, one an athletic blonde with “a cute pout” and the other, “a tall, muscular, ebony carving.” After an anonymous sender mails the Tylers photos of their sensual senior moments, Alicia enlists Carla to track down the mysterious peeping shutterbug. Retired from the Coast Guard, Carla now heads a small security consulting business that occasionally conducts investigations. She and her late husband ran the enterprise, but since Marty’s recent death, Carla hasn’t totally committed to being back at the company’s helm, instead dwelling on her loss and spending time on her sailboat and at her beach cottage. But this new case, and another involving a wealthy teenage girl gone missing while on spring break in Barbados, gives her a renewed sense of purpose. Hatfield can bring the funny—“Carla was definitely carrying the ball, and at that hour of the morning she wasn’t carrying it that far”—and the crude: “Carla would have given her left boob for a pair of binoculars at that moment.” Often, however, the information supplied, though interesting, doesn’t advance the story, and the narrative view, primarily third person, occasionally switches to second-person mode: “[Y]ou are first struck breathless by the gorgeous vista.” Nevertheless, Hatfield’s description of the vista of Navarre Beach, Florida, is so vivid that you just might envy Carla, enjoying the white sand, the blue-green water and a local haunt’s fresh-baked cinnamon rolls the “size of her head.”

An easy-reading mystery with a focus on “seniors with benefits.”

MERCY GOODHUE A Puritan Woman’s Story Kern, Elizabeth HillHouse Books (372 pp.) $14.99 paper | $9.99 e-book Oct. 1, 2014 978-0-9835815-2-9

A historical novel about a strong-willed Puritan woman (based on real-life Anne Needham Hett) present at the founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

At the beginning of Kern’s (Wanting to be Jackie Kennedy, 2011) novel, Mercy Goodhue may be only 14 years old, but when she sees her father, a shipwright, examining the family’s financial ledgers, she recognizes the seriousness of his worried expression. In the 1629 town of Boston in Lincolnshire, England, a letter arrives from “lawyer and manor lord” John Winthrop, offering the family a chance to join his chartered voyage to the strange new world of Massachusetts. Mercy’s parents choose to see it as a gift of fortune, a chance to start their lives over and perhaps make their fortune. After the long sea crossing, they and the other settlers draw up off the coast of Nova Scotia as they prepare to make the final journey to the land they will

PARENT FATIGUE SYNDROME What To Do When Conventional Wisdom Is Not Very Wise Hulton, Joanna Studio Owls Inc. (187 pp.) $14.95 paper | Nov. 9, 2013 978-0-9898417-2-6

Insightful parenting tips for achieving understanding, empathy and healthy human development.

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“[Julia’s] a funny, flawed heroine whom readers of all ages will identify with and admire.” from the cellar

call New England, with Mercy and her family among the group assembled to hear Winthrop, now governor, give his famous “city upon a hill” speech, urging the Pilgrims to undertake their mission in a spirit of fellowship. With patient care and thorough research, Kern takes readers through the founding days of the new city of Boston on what was then called the Shawmut Peninsula, from the earliest struggles for food and shelter to the town’s slow prospering in the face of hardships. “Outside our doors we know not what spirits, animals, or Indians lurk in the darkness, their appetites primed to devour us,” Mercy writes to a friend back in England. “At night the wolves howl wildly and the wind whistles through the cracks in our walls.” As time passes, Mercy grudgingly comes to like the imperious midwife Goody Hammer (one of the book’s most memorable characters) and to love young Joshua Hoyt, who becomes her husband. More immigrants arrive from England, including Anne Hutchinson, later famously tried for heresy and banished from the colony, and Kern renders it all—the seasons, the clothing, the food, the mental preoccupations, the shaping of society—with solid pacing and in pleasing detail.

A winning novel of ordinary people in an extraordinary new world.

relationships than readers might expect from a story with such an unbelievable plot twist. A great deal of credit goes to Julia’s smart, tough narration, which keeps the story grounded in reality. She’s a funny, flawed heroine whom readers of all ages will identify with and admire.

A touching tale of two people from different times, both trying to keep their splintering families together.

LEANING INTO LOVE A Spiritual Journey Through Grief

Mansfield, Elaine Larson Publications (388 pp.) $17.50 paper | Oct. 7, 2014 978-1-936012-72-5 A meditative memoir of a wife’s bereavement.

In her debut, Mansfield recounts her personal and spiritual evolutions following her beloved husband’s terminal cancer diagnosis. Divided into before and after sections, the book details both the painful months leading up to his death and the years of mourning and emotional exploration that followed. The first half will be familiar to anyone who has been involved with the treatment of a long-term illness, from the indignities of hospitals to the search for moments of joy amid bleak circumstances. In these early chapters, Mansfield’s story often seems to lack direction, focusing on medical minutiae at the expense of narrative momentum and sometimes relying on clichéd language, as when the author refers to herself as “a lioness protecting her cub.” In the after section, however, the book builds into something far more original and exciting, offering readers a bold exploration of loss, grief and unexpected consequences. Drawing on the teachings of Buddhism, Jungian psychology, mythology and other spiritual resources, Mansfield thoughtfully crafts practices and rituals to help her and her loved ones cope with her husband’s death— an ongoing attempt to reconcile the joy of life with the pain of death. Her descriptions of her bereavement and slow recovery are honest and moving, rendered in subtly poetic language; at one point, she describes a group of dolphins as “luminous revelations leaping from the great unconscious sea.” What’s more, Mansfield’s perspective on her husband’s death is refreshingly curious and unflinching. She bravely allows for the possibility that losing him may have opened doors to opportunities she otherwise would not have had. These sharp insights alongside specific details of practical coping mechanisms make her account an instructive guidebook for readers confronting their own losses. Those interested in the natural world—and city folk yearning for a taste of country life—will also appreciate the vivid descriptions of her rural New York homestead and its central role in her healing process.

Deeply spiritual without being preachy, a comforting guide to mourning for readers of any stripe.

THE CELLAR Lo, Katherine Manuscript

After her uncle dies in the attacks on 9/11, a tough Brooklyn teen moves to Virginia and connects across time with a boy whose family has been divided by the Civil War. When 16-year-old Julia McKinley’s uncle Denny died on 9/11, her mother fell apart. Unable to keep living a normal life without her beloved twin brother, her mother’s solution is to leave New York, rent an old house in rural Virginia and drown her emotions in copious amounts of wine. Julia accompanies her in an attempt to provide support, leaving her father, younger brother and close friends behind to start her senior year of high school down South. Frustrated by her mother’s insistence on spending less time with her than at the bottom of a glass, Julia ends up spending a great deal of time in the house’s cellar, where she encounters a teenage boy named Elias. He’s not a ghost; he’s all too alive, just in another time period. While Julia tries to piece together her family, torn apart by terrorism, Elias, in the middle of the Civil War, hopes to reunite his Southern separatist brother with his Union-leaning father. Seemingly fated to meet in order to help each other cope, Julia and Elias grow to rely on their daily heart-to-hearts in the cellar, to the point that Julia’s growing love for someone stuck in the 19th century threatens to prevent her from fostering relationships with people in the modern world. The premise sounds straight out of Doctor Who, but rather than focus on the wild sci-fi aspects of her story, debut author Lo focuses on the emotions. What results in a far more realistic, mature look at human |

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Interviews & Profiles

Joe Cottonwood

The indie writer gets to the heart of it, in his work and in his writing

By Nick A. Zaino III The first story in 99 Jobs shows Cottonwood wiring an illegal rental space for a customer in 1989, melting a screwdriver on an electrical panel with a defective circuit breaker. The client wants to stiff him and deduct the cost of the circuit breaker from Cottonwood’s pay, and Cottonwood is only able to collect his full payment by threatening to tell the building department about the rental.

The book is full of personal pitfalls, oddities and small victories. Cottonwood’s clients over the years span a wide swath of humanity. They are troubled working people and petty millionaires, the stingy and the golden-hearted, the stoic and the flirtatious. Most were fine, he assures readers, and at the very least, gave him an opportunity to learn some truth about himself and other people. Even if that means, as it did in one job, repainting part of a ceiling after a client turned a fingerprint Cottonwood left behind into a giant mess.

“Those are the kinds of things you confront,” says Cottonwood. “And you learn what’s acceptable to you and what’s not. Sometimes, you learn it the hard way.

You do things you regret, but you come out of it a better person. People test you. Sometimes they’re just shockingly wonderful people, you know, where you don’t expect it. And sometimes they’re shockingly horrible. That’s part of life.”

Cottonwood is hesitant to call 99 Jobs a memoir.

Readers do get to watch him go from a young man changing light bulbs for a local college and doing his first construction jobs to a father warning his musician son away from pot (a drug of which he partook in his younger days) and eventually to a grandfather who worries about getting on a ladder. It’s all seen through his eyes, but he doesn’t feel it’s about him. He prefers to think of it as a book about “the humane side of construction.”

As a contractor, Joe Cottonwood made it a rule to avoid potential clients with white carpets. He knows he won’t get along with them, that they have unrealistic expectations of the world, and they aren’t going to like Cottonwood’s “rougher,” more “rustic style,” he says. He expects things to get rough, a bit dirty.

That’s the ethos that guided him through more than 30 years of remodeling and rebuilding jobs near his home in La Honda, California, and through four novels, four young-adult books, a book of poetry, and his latest offering, 99 Jobs: Blood, Sweat and Houses, a look at the “construction life,” as he calls it.

“I don’t go for fancy stuff,” he says, speaking by phone. “That’s part of my construction style, and it’s also part of my writing style. I’m not looking for pretty metaphors all the time and that kind of thing.

I just get to the heart of it. That’s pretty much what my construction is, too.”

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“I don’t consider myself the subject of the book,” he says. “I consider the construction life to be the subject of the book. And particularly not ‘how-to’ but ‘who is.’ That’s why I said ‘humane.’ It’s not about what tools to use or how projects go, it’s about the people you meet, the moral boundaries, the personal tests, the physical tests you went up against.”

“When I’m talking to my kid about smoking pot,” he adds, “it’s because he’s helping me with a job. I’ve hired him for the summer.”

In that same conversation with his son, Cottonwood describes himself as a “successful mediocre writer.” He’s being tongue-in-cheek in the context of the conversation, since his son wants to be a musician, and they are debating what it means to be successful. Cottonwood doesn’t believe he is a mediocre writer or that he’s a successful one, at least in the financial sense. He published his first book in 1973 with a small press. He also published his next book, Famous Potatoes, with a small press, but it was eventually picked up by Delta.

He now self-publishes most of his work and has seen sales move from paper to e-books. Though he gets fan mail from around the world, he doesn’t produce bestsellers. He strives to break even financially.

“I consider myself successful in that I’m pleased with the work I’ve done, the writing I’ve produced,” he says. “I’m very satisfied with it. I feel like I did what I set out to do with it and it’s well-written, and… yeah, I take pride in it. So it depends on where success is defined. If it’s defined in terms of making a lot of money, no I’m not. But if it’s in terms of what I’ve written, I’m happy with it. And enough people are happy with it that I hear from them, and that makes me very happy.”

Cottonwood’s career has outlasted several sea changes in the industry. When he was more involved in traditional publishing, he had an agent who was an ardent defender of his work. When she passed unexpectedly, he was left a “midlist writer in a best-sellers’ world.” That forced him back into self-publishing and from print to e-books. It was strange, at first, for someone used to building things with his hands to get into e-books. But it was easier when he won a Kindle in a contest and started reading them.

“Everybody says it, and I said it, too: ‘I really love paper books. I don’t ever want to read e-books.’ And then you try one and, ‘Huh, not bad!’ So I think the world’s just going through that change. We, as writ-

ers, just need to get used to it,” Cottonwood says.

These days, Cottonwood only works as a contractor when he’s roped into it by friends and acquaintances. But contracting was always the day job, although one he found greatly rewarding. Writing is more a part of who he is, and if he had to choose, he would have been a full-time writer from the beginning. He says there are different satisfactions to writing and contracting, and though the result of both is something he has made, the books are more satisfying.

“The reason is, I’m the only person who could have written that book,” he says. “I could build a great, great house, but I’m not the only person who could have done that. That’s kind of why I’m still writing and not still contracting. I’ve only got the energy for one. If I don’t create these characters, they will never exist. So I need to get them out of me. I need to get them out in the world.”

Nick A. Zaino III is a freelance writer based in Boston covering the arts for Kirkus Reviews, the Boston Globe, BDCWire.com, TheSpitTake.com and other publications.

99 Jobs received a starred review in the Sept. 1, 2014, issue of Kirkus Reviews.

99 JOBS Blood, Sweat, and Houses Cottonwood, Joe Clear Heart Books (302 pp.) $17.99 paper | $4.99 e-book Nov. 10, 2013 978-0-615-90944-8 |

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THE IMAGINE PROJECT Stories of Courage, Hope and Love

According to the Second Constitution, a politician’s committing fraud against his or her constituents is a treasonous offense. Enter President Beth Roche-Suarez, who’s about to approve the South American Free Trade Act. Her attorney, Bill Waverly, watches alongside the media as President Roche-Suarez sits with the politicians who wrote the legislature—and vetoes the act. Everyone is aghast, since the fulfillment of SAFTA is what the president campaigned on. As she explains, however, “any benefit would be short-lived and it would eventually cost American jobs.” Waverly believes she’ll be tried for high treason, so he visits his old professor George Comstock for advice. The encounter brings Comstock’s memory back to the Second Constitutional Convention, held in Philadelphia back in 2037. There, he argued to reframe the Constitution, but he also went head-to-head against Sebastian Irving, a delegate carrying a metallic blue folio. In the folio was a more malleable version of Comstock’s own treason clause, hinting that the Second Constitution was under siege even during its inception. It may seem that debut author McMahon is striking an implausible note early on by telling readers his world of 2059 values life—the president’s, no less—so little. It’s actually a brilliant tactic, which Comstock himself uses in the classroom; the plot is like a “tool to incite passion, to test his students’ understanding of the founding principles of the Constitution”—that is, to get students (i.e., readers) thinking about why America’s greatness has tarnished. Casual thriller readers may flinch at being so handled, but McMahon’ narrative nevertheless zips along, full of clever axioms: e.g., “Knowing what people hated was much more powerful than knowing what they wanted.” Lively flashbacks and fiery personalities make this more than just a memorable exercise in ethics.

A political thriller for readers on both sides of the aisle.

Maroney, Dianne Photos by Masitti, Mario Yampa Valley Publishing (160 pp.) $35.00 | Apr. 13, 2013 978-0-9889951-0-9 A collection of photographs and inspirational stories of individuals who have overcome obstacles or worked toward humanitarian causes.

In this debut coffee-table book, Maroney brings together dozens of personal stories, each accompanied by photographs of the narrators and identified with thematic titles—gift, heritage, winning, resolve, etc. Each narrative is a series of sentences beginning with “Imagine...” followed by an element of the narrator’s story: For instance, “Imagine...appreciating what you’ve left behind only after seeing this new and different land,” says a woman who moved back and forth between Japan and the United States. Or “Imagine...standing at a stranger’s door, a can of paint and paintbrush in your hands, hoping they will let you paint their house—for free,” from a man who found new purpose in good deeds after his wife died. Some stories reflect the narrator’s triumph over a difficult past—a teenager who grew up in the foster care system and went on to win a national financial literacy competition, a musician who performs despite being born with cerebral palsy, etc.—while others are more about the individuals’ choices, such as using yoga as the basis for a microfinance operation. A few of the featured individuals have been associated with headline-making events, such as the ER staff who treated the mass-shooting victims in Aurora, Colorado, and a Columbine High School graduate who learned forgiveness. But most share victories on a smaller scale, acclimating to an adopted homeland or touching lives through low-budget philanthropy. While all the contributors’ stories are uplifting, they avoid the clichés of motivational speeches, and the spare prose keeps even the most tragic stories from becoming maudlin. The book is well-designed, too—a simple blue, black and white palette allows the words and pictures to draw the reader’s full attention.

An attractive, compelling collection of stories and photographs related to conquering adversity and imagining vibrant possibilities.

DANCING IN THE BAMBOO FOREST A Travel Memoir

Mitra, Djahariah Dancing Tree Books (304 pp.) $14.95 paper | Sep. 15, 2014 978-0-9960876-0-5 An American woman coping with physical and emotional distress delves deeper into her Indian heritage and yoga practice in an effort to find true balance.

At this point, the tale of a single Westerner hoping to find herself by journeying to faraway India probably qualifies as a literary cliché. But Mitra’s lyrical mix of devotion and critical analysis is truly revelatory. As she tells the story of her commitment to earnestly pursuing the eight limbs of Patanjali’s Ashtanga yoga in her ancestral homeland, she never runs away from the doubt that tugs at her analytical mind. Her book also tells a sympathetic story of a young, intelligent woman actively battling her own stinging depression and chronic pain. Although she fully opens herself to the spiritual, she also fearlessly questions some of the most basic traditions of Eastern thought. Detachment, for example, is a tall order for a young woman yearning for a family, and gurus can sometimes get in the way of true insight. Mitra also

THE BLUE FOLIO McMahon, Matt Black Ostrich Press Nov. 20, 2014

This debut political thriller explores the consequences of ushering in and maintaining a less corrupt U.S. government.

In 2059, the United States is run directly by its voters, without moneyed special interest groups manipulating politics.

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“[A] graceful, empathetic portrayal of young suffering.” from penalty kick

Penalty Kick

doesn’t tolerate the sexism and misogyny that exist in the gutters on the road to enlightenment—realities that make traveling alone in India sound like a nightmare for women. The author tells of how she was instructed how to dress before venturing out into public in India: “It’s funny until you have to dress in that custom every day without respite to protect yourself from men’s inability to control themselves and society’s lack of expectation for them to do so, if tempted.” That tension that Mitra experiences while pursuing spiritual practice creates a compelling narrative. The book also provides real insight into the essence of yogic teachings. Overall, the fact that Mitra is able to overcome her obstacles is truly uplifting and makes for an inspirational journey.

A compelling travelogue that earnestly maps a traveler’s heart and soul.

O’Leary, Terence Swan Creek Press (216 pp.) $9.95 paper | $5.95 e-book | May 12, 2014 978-0-9753216-3-8 The life of a 15-year-old soccer star is changed in an instant in O’Leary’s (The Town That Never Stared, 2011) poignant YA novel. “[W]e’re two freaks,” Josh Connelly tells Brooke Avery, a girl who’s known at their high school as the “hat girl,” because she wears them to hide her hair loss from chemotherapy. Although her most recent blood tests were encouraging, Brooke will forever be known as the “girl who had cancer,” and the scars on her leg provide a constant reminder. Josh was once mainly known around school for his soccer skills, until he was in a horrifying car accident in which his mother died. The aftermath is brutal: He starts having anxiety attacks, and heartbreakingly, his father can barely stand to look at him. Brooke does look closely at Josh, however, as she understands his agony: “Like Josh, she had sat in a hospital room with her whole world shattered.” Gradually, with Brooke’s gentle encouragement and the help of a psychologist, Josh begins to accept what happened.

The character of Brooke has a quality of serene compassion, without a trace of self-pity, and the same is true of O’Leary’s novel, a graceful, empathetic portrayal of young suffering.

Josh’s pain is finely depicted in all its complexity but without any judgment or fussy sentimentality. The author’s respect for his characters is clear, even when they behave less than admirably. Josh’s dad, for example, presents a strong contrast to his son; his reluctance to help Josh may seem abhorrent, but his own hurt is no less relentless and requires just as much healing. Despite the grief that permeates the novel, there are also moments of levity, particularly during several brisk, invigorating scenes set on the soccer field.

A moving study of loss appropriate for both young adults and older readers.

A LAYER OF DARKNESS An Andrew Johnson Novel

Niles, R.A. Amazon Digital Services (282 pp.) $2.99 e-book | Jun. 17, 2014 In 1945 San Francisco, a police detective’s investigation exposes a tangled political conspiracy and international espionage in Niles’ debut crime/political thriller.

With its opening line, this novel gets off to a dramatic start: “They said the cleaning lady had run out of the house, screaming into the street.” When police inspector Andrew Johnson arrives at the scene, he sees why: There’s a horribly burned corpse on the garage floor curved around a small sledgehammer. From above, it looks like a Soviet hammer and sickle. But nothing is what it initially seems in Johnson’s investigation—not even the cleaning lady. (Indeed, not even Johnson himself: He looks African-American but is also half-Irish.) The overall mystery encompasses elements that initially seem as foggy as San Francisco itself, including a secret radio, a Chinese launderer (of both clothes and money), mysterious foreigners, Italian fishermen, a femme fatale, a sketchy bartender and a Cuban law student named Fidel. In his debut, Niles shows great skill in characterization, deftly sketching the players’ back stories to help readers make sense of their present actions. Johnson, for example, has some faults, but he’s compassionate, observant, brave and clever. He’s no idealistic dreamer, though; when he was 5, he saw his father murdered by Chicago drug dealers. The plot is tricky but not overly contrived, and it never relies on cheap narrative devices. Niles uses his historical and geographical settings well; there are even a few deliberate anachronisms, explained in an afterword. For all the novel’s high drama, however, it thoughtfully explores questions of morality and the human condition: “I think there are a lot of people with maybe some good intentions at some point in their lives who come to realize they’re nothing but suckers....Maybe we’re all suckers, but if we can find just one thing—one good thing—we should hang on to that and the hell with all the rest,” says Johnson.

A sophisticated, deft and exciting thriller and a great beginning for a planned series.

LORD FANCY PANTS Pakzaban, Debbie Illus. by Lemaire, Bonnie CreateSpace (38 pp.) $15.99 paper | Jul. 10, 2014 978-1-4937-1373-8

In first-time children’s author Pakzaban’s gently off-the-wall picture book, a little boy with an obsessive attachment to his tailor-made fancy pants learns a lesson in generosity and friendship.

Palace-dweller Pierre’s obsession with fashion begins as an infant when his mother embroiders his diapers with the initials LFP—short for Lord Fancy Pants. As he grows, Pierre lives up to his nickname, “insisting that his mother embroider giant letters |

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in gold thread on the bottom of all of his fancy pants,” that “the best seamstress in the kingdom” be hired “to make beautiful clothes only for him,” and that his jackets be cut short in back to show his scrolled initials worked in gold thread. Strolling through the village to show off his fancy pants and shopping for silks and velvets in the village bazaar, LFP is the envy of the other children, and soon fancy pants become all the rage.

(Lemaire’s pleasant watercolor-style illustrations render LFP’s adventures in sartorial splendor with a suitably light touch.) But when LFP snubs a village boy for wearing plain brown pants, and then oversees the creation of his own fanciest pair of pants yet, a lesson is in the offing. LFP’s new pants are so heavily encrusted with jewels he can hardly walk (“His pants were stiff and went all the way up to his underarms. They were ballooned at the knees in big billowy gold poofs”), and even his previously overindulgent parents laugh at the sight. The author’s not-sosubtle themes of sharing and friendship—and the other side of the coin, vanity and materialism—lead to a wiser Pierre when a mishap at the river involving his puppy leads to a rescue by the boy he snubbed earlier. Happy to have a friend to play with, Pierre generously donates his “old silly fancy pants” to all the children in the village, while the author offers a reassuring little twist at the end to say that caring about one’s appearance isn’t a bad thing and that it can be a boy thing, too. The author might consider, however, adding a line or two to show that LFP’s royal parents, who aided and abetted their son’s fancy-pants obsession from birth, learned a needed lesson, too.

An inventive take on the perils of excess and the pleasures of bigheartedness.

life. “It is no secret; when you are crazy, you lose all credibility,” Platko writes. She then fell in love with the abusive Earl, a black drummer by whom she had her first child. Her life seemed to be a downward spiral—then she discovered psychoanalysis and began a lifelong inner journey to explore the mysteries that compelled her. Not that her exploration changed her seemingly irrational behavior. She became a Jungian analyst and married Stephen, a fellow psychologist, and they had two daughters together, but she then fell in love with her suicidal client, John.

Torn by jealousy, Stephen divorced her. Rather than resolving in platitudes or anodynes, the memoir ends with a fuller understanding found in self-defined wisdom. In the book’s second half, as Platko plunges ever deeper into her inner exploration, her insights and her stylistic exploration enrich her narrative.

“The way I see it,” she writes, “each person, each family, each group, each generation, each culture and race, is called to own the shadow of their brokenness.” Ultimately, she discovers that her real destiny as a writer revealing inner truths has energized and fulfilled her sense of inner truth.

A sometimes brutally honest autobiography that strips away social pretension to reveal raw individuality.

ELEVEN

Rogers, Tom Alto Nido Press, LLC (200 pp.) $8.95 paper | $4.95 e-book | Jan. 14, 2014 A young boy’s birthday falls on Sept.

11, 2001, in Rogers’ riveting debut middlegrade novel.

There are two things that Alex Douglas loves more than anything else: dogs and airplanes. He’s convinced that his 11th birthday will be the best ever because his parents have promised to get him a dog— if he proves he’s responsible enough by getting better grades. But the day before his birthday, he realizes that he didn’t hold up his end of the bargain. Worse, he has an awful fight about it with his father, ending it with three regrettable words: “I hate you.”

Alex’s birthday seems back on track the next morning after he has a pancake breakfast. But then school bully Jordan smashes his cupcakes on the bus, and later, school lets out early without explanation before Alex’s birthday celebration. He must take care of his little sister until their mother, a nurse, gets home, but it gives him a chance to track down a stray dog, with whom he connects immediately. Then he finally hears the news that terrorists have crashed planes into the World Trade Center. All Alex can think about is his dad, who drives the PATH commuter train to the twin towers, and what he can do to bring him home safely. Rogers displays deft insight into the 11-year-old mind, and by alternating chapters among Alex, an older man named Mac and a mysterious “Man in the White Shirt” at the World Trade Center, he makes Alex’s legitimate worries, and the story as a whole, much more intense. Young readers will easily sympathize with Alex as they’re drawn into the terror of an event that, most likely, happened before they were born. As a result, the book may help them

In the Tracks of the Unseen Memoirs of a Jungian Psychoanalyst Platko, Jane Davenport CreateSpace (320 pp.) $20.00 paper | $9.99 e-book Oct. 30, 2013 978-1-4922-5113-2

In her first book, psychoanalyst Platko tells her harrowing yet uplifting story.

Born into an old New England family of Puritan stock, Platko entered her teens during the 1960s civil rights era. Sexualized by her uncle Henry, whom she adored, she developed a dual personality: the dutiful daughter and the revolutionary devoted to the civil rights movement. Dissociation—this split between good and bad, between conscious action and unconscious motivation—expresses itself through Platko’s tormented, complex sexuality and the difficult love relationships she reveals with stark and disarming candor. She fell for young James, a black kid she burned for, and he impregnated her; she had an abortion, though. Her uncle Henry spoke for the family when they rejected and scorned her. She traveled south for her civil rights work and met a sicko cowboy type who raped her repeatedly and eventually married her, only to vanish forever from her 180

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Lessons from a CEO’s Journal Leading Talent and Innovation

understand that tragedy’s personal side. Overall, it’s perfect for young readers who enjoy survival or disaster novels or for classrooms hoping to explore this event in recent history.

A touching, terrifying book about family, growing up and an event that shook the United States.

Ruyle, Kim E. Inventive Talent Consulting (206 pp.) $19.95 paper | Jul. 17, 2014 978-0-692-22375-8

My Name is Luke

Ruddle, Jim Amika Press (216 pp.) $14.95 paper | $4.95 e-book Apr. 25, 2014 978-1-937484-20-0

Talented people are the engines that power companies forward, argues human resources consultant Ruyle (FYI for Insight, 2010, etc.).

While Ruyle’s ideas on talent management aren’t new, he conveys them in a novel way: The book takes the form of a fictionalized journal written by “Jack,” an engineer-turned-businessman who just reaped a $70 million windfall from selling his stake in a composite parts manufacturing firm. Jack finds himself a reluctant passenger on a Caribbean cruise, so he uses the time to reflect on lessons he’s learned during his career. With an irreverent wit and no-nonsense practicality, Jack outlines the approach his company used to get the most from his employees. The journal presents a complete, interconnected system of talent management, from recruiting new employees to strategically deploying deep experts. Much-debated subjects such as “onboarding” and “succession-planning” are broken down into easy-to-follow lists, offering managers a template that can be tailored to their organizations. Sprinkled throughout the text are insights into the psychology behind human performance.

Here, the book shines because these factors are often overlooked. Jack contends that “learning agility”—the willingness and ability to apply what is learned in one situation to another— is the “single most powerful predictor of success” for aspiring managers. Jack is really a composite of several executives whom Ruyle has encountered, so he has an enviable—some might say impossible—amount of leadership acumen. More could have been included about the onerous side of management, such as motivating and disciplining underperforming employees. While it can be classified under the heading of “Human Resources,” the book also says much about the role of a leader. Jack argues it’s the job of the CEO to spur innovation by creating an environment where employees can thrive. Talent is a source of competitive advantage too important to ignore.

Best practices shared via a catchy narrative, making for an indispensable guide for leaders who want to play the game and win.

A heartwarming adventure tale about sailing, boyhood and 1850s America.

Ruddle’s debut novel centers on Luke Constance, a plucky young boy living in Marblehead, Massachusetts, in 1858. Luke, an extremely precocious and well-read 15-year-old kid, lost both of his parents years ago, so he lives with his grandparents Mike and Ellen. Mike owns and runs a business on a boat, the Mary Constance, and the book’s early chapters chronicle entertaining tales of Luke working and playing on it. There are also charming stories of Luke’s everyday life in Marblehead, including mischief involving teachers at his school and neighbors in town. The plot picks up after Luke falls asleep on the Mary Constance, waking just as two crooks hijack the boat and sail it out to sea. After he’s discovered, Luke must figure out how to keep himself and the crooks alive, as the hijackers’ sailing knowledge is limited and the New England waters and weather are anything but predictable. In this heartwarming tale about growing up in New England in the mid-19th century, Ruddle includes plenty of interesting information about the sea and the colorful people who work on it: “The fellows out on the fishing boats believe stuff that can make you roll your eyes. Like if you get a hook in your finger, you should stick the hook in something—a rail or mast, maybe—because that will heal your finger quicker.” It’s also packed full of historical information, which the author weaves seamlessly into the narrative; at one point, for example, Luke talks about national strife and the just-invented telegraph: “You could work that telegraph until the wires started to smoke, and it wouldn’t make folks love each other.”

An educational, engaging story about 19th-century New England that’s particularly suited for readers passionate about sailing.

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“The book abounds with insider details (the precise lumen range of the Apple Store’s lighting system) as well as broader analyses of the evolution of retail in the late 20th century.” from retail schmetail™

The Insider’s Guide to a Career in Book Publishing

In this debut memoir, Stein combines personal reminiscences with business insights derived from a half-century of experience, both as the child of a midcentury retailer and as an experienced designer and brand manager. Stein places his story within the context of cultural and geographic trends. Born shortly after the end of World War II, he grew up in Milwaukee’s Jewish community and was part of the family business.

His father and uncle opened a jewelry and toy store, then a small chain of drugstores. Although he studied interior design and initially pursued it as a career, Stein found himself returning to his retail roots in recent decades as companies began to understand the importance of managing the customer’s entire shopping experience. The book abounds with insider details (the precise lumen range of the Apple Store’s lighting system) as well as broader analyses of the evolution of retail in the late 20th century. From his Midwest base, Stein is in prime position to describe the changes caused by Minnesota companies Target and Best Buy, among others, but as a seasoned trendwatcher, he draws on examples from throughout the United States to explain the role of the mall and experiments with large chain stores designed to blend into urban spaces. The book also examines the challenges contemporary retail faces from the growth of online shopping, and Stein makes a convincing case for a sustained resurgence of independent businesses.

Elements of personal history and industry analysis are woven together throughout the book, which at times dilutes the narrative’s focus but more often humanizes the bigger picture; the changing opportunities for store design, for instance, become far more vivid when Stein realizes that adding employees to his firm makes it less convenient to live in his office.

A broad but detailed look at the evolution of retail in the United States through the story of one Midwestern family with a long history in the business.

Siegfried, Carin Chickadee Books (134 pp.) $14.95 paper | $4.99 e-book Jun. 11, 2014 978-0-9853362-5-7

A book industry veteran describes the publishing world to aspiring editors, sales reps and production managers.

In this debut career guide, Siegfried uses both her own experience working in the industry and comprehensive interviews with other insiders to present a balanced, thorough portrait of the world of books and publishing. The book targets readers in the early stages of their careers, particularly college students and recent graduates, and begins with a detailed overview of the departments found in most publishing houses, from editorial and publicity to subsidiary rights and sales.

Siegfried warns readers that it can seem like everyone dreams of being the next great editor, and she suggests that other, less well-known career paths can provide professional fulfillment as well. Although there is some discussion of smaller publishers, the book focuses heavily on the industry’s Manhattan core (“Eventually, you can move away from New York City if you’d like”), and while much of the book’s advice is also useful to those trying to break into publishing in other locations, readers will not find an insider’s perspective on topics like university publishing or the options available in Minneapolis or San Francisco. Siegfried is clearly knowledgeable, and the book addresses many of the structural changes the industry has undergone in the past two decades, though her description of the retail side of the business draws on her experience at a chain bookstore and seems less applicable to the careers available at other book retailers. The book’s discussion of the jobsearch process is directed specifically at the needs of recent graduates—a line-by-line analysis of several job postings is particularly helpful—and offers advice that can be applied to cover letters and interviews in other industries as well. A detailed glossary at the end of the book explains everything from flap copy to first serial rights.

A thorough introduction to the publishing industry.

A DIFFERENT KIND OF VETERINARIAN Stephens, Jack L. CreateSpace (236 pp.) $9.95 paper | Jan. 27, 2014 978-1-4751-5920-2

A readable look at life as seen through the eyes of a busy veterinarian.

This debut memoir skips from subject to subject, as Idaho resident Stephens (affectionately called “Dr. Jack”) shares information and opinions about animals, health care and the relationship between the two. Along the way, he’s assertive and self-deprecating by turns and often vastly entertaining. After he underwent throat-cancer surgery, he was forced to communicate primarily by writing things down, so here, in chatty, fact-filled prose, he draws upon his personal experience, informed by medical expertise, to share a wealth of anecdotes and advice. Early in his career, he realized that some clients couldn’t afford to treat their pets’ illnesses, and so, in 1980, he became involved in establishing pet insurance as a viable option.

RETAIL SCHMETAIL™ ONE Hundred Years, TWO Immigrants, THREE Generations, FOUR Hundred Projects.

Stein, Sanford Beaver’s Pond Press (312 pp.) $29.99 | $9.99 e-book | Feb. 14, 2014 978-1-59298-956-0

A veteran designer with roots in retail reflects on the changes he and his extended family have seen in the industry.

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He includes a useful checklist for evaluating insurance coverage, as well as a list of recommended websites and readings. He also tells of his involvement with other animal-saving projects, including NASCAR tie-ins to benefit pet adoption and Pups on Parole, a Nevada program that pairs shelter dogs with women prisoners. In another section, he weighs in on hunting: He’s in favor of it, when it’s regulated, and explains the practical advantages of hunting for controlling wild animal populations.

Despite having a household full of pets, he confesses his surprise at forming special bonds with small dogs he once scorned as “coyote bait...those yippy, yappy lapdogs.” He also details his difficult choices regarding his stage 4 cancer diagnosis, an experience that he says proved the healing power of his miniature pinscher, Spanky; afterward, he writes, “Prescribe Pets, Not Pills” became his motto, and he describes how companion animals can evoke psychological and biochemical transformations.

“Take it from this former macho guy—indulge and bond with your pet,” he writes.

A cogent, engaging celebration of the human/animal connection that may persuade readers to rush out and adopt a pet.

eugenics is incorporated well into the plot on many levels. Harry matures from wealthy, irresponsible postgrad to a man owning his past, determined to prove he’s the apple that fell far from the tree.

Social issues don’t impede this slightly gothic crime story topped with well-laid logical revelations.

FLIGHT TECHNOLOGY AND METAPHYSICS The Impact of Abstract Ideas on the Development of Aeronautics and Astronautics Tolkowsky, Gideon Inkwater Press (118 pp.) $14.95 paper | Jul. 25, 2013 978-1-62901-002-1

In his absorbing, informative collection of essays, Tolkowsky (Homage to Stretcher Bearer, 2009) examines the connection between technology and metaphysics, focusing specifically on the history of flight.

From its beginnings, mankind has been fascinated with the idea of flying and the divine mystery of outer space. In the preface to this book, Tolkowsky speculates that “the problems that engineers apply their minds to and the solutions they find...are strongly influenced by abstract ideas.” He centers his essays on flight technology and metaphysics, based on the idea that man’s ability to fly “served as a starting line for an unfathomable wave of technological innovation and merging of technology with society in its broadest sense.” In Chapter 1, he examines how Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution affected the scientific and spiritual communities of the 19th century.

He specifically details Russian scientist Konstantin E. Tsiolkovsky’s theory of “Homo cosmiscus,” or the next stage of human evolution, in which man would biologically adapt to life in outer space. This concept of “space colonization” is continued in Chapter 2, comparing and contrasting how people in Russia and the United States have approached spiritual and engineering aspects of space exploration.

In the third chapter, the author dissects the religious motivations behind mankind’s interest in space, specifically examining the tenets of pagan sun worship and its strong significance in modern religion and technology. The final chapter explains the early struggles of engineers, scientists and theorists seeking to build a flying machine. With the author’s previous experience as a combat pilot and aeronautical engineer, he clearly shows reverence and devotion to the subject matter. The book’s thesis is unusual yet intriguing, strongly supported with historical facts and developed smoothly from chapter to chapter. The prose is remarkably explanative, if sometimes repetitious, and never weighed down by excessive scientific terminology.

Although some of the ideas may be difficult to fathom, the book is often engrossing; readers should be able to understand it without any previous knowledge of metaphysics or technology.

A complex but clearly written account of abstract scientific theory recommended for readers interested in new realms of thought.

GODS AND LESSER MEN Thompson, Alan W & B Publishers Inc. (300 pp.) $17.99 paper | $2.99 e-book Mar. 17, 2014 978-0-615-97767-6

A young lawyer confronts eugenics in his family and his own questionable heritage—not to mention murder and thievery—in this legal thriller that shakes a family tree to its roots.

Thinking his life has been turned upside down when his patrician New England girlfriend, Alexis, announces her pregnancy and imminent abortion, Harry Monmouth soon finds that that’s the least of his problems. Scion of a prominent family, Harry discovers the family fortune is based on his judge father’s theft from psychiatric patients questionably committed; his mother and her eminent doctor father were also involved in eugenics stretching back to some infamous European fascists in the 1930s. Their work continues with an abortion clinic and the State Breeding and Betterment Board, which requires that unfit citizens be sterilized.

When proceedings start against the indigent and fertile sister of an old African-American friend, Harry defends her right to choose; his discoveries help him recognize “the odious dysfunctional bloodline that was my family.” While the expository dialogue can sound a bit stilted and is never as powerful as the action, the book rarely lingers to pontificate. There are some awkward moments, as when another African-American friend of Harry’s, an empowered and intelligent woman, describes her schoolgirl crush on him: “a kitchen wench mooning over a young master.”

Thompson otherwise has excellent control of his characters, and their motivations are expertly and appropriately wed to a seamless plot where nothing is out of place. In particular, the theme of |

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The Rise and Fall of the Unions’ Empire The Political Quandary

provides a comprehensive overview, detailing major victories such as President John F. Kennedy’s 1962 executive order certifying collective bargaining as a legal right and defeats such as President Ronald Reagan’s rough treatment of striking air-traffic controllers in 1981.

The work touches upon several current controversies with delicacy and aplomb, such as the legality of the “card check” method of labor organizing, the prevalence of right-to-work laws and the productivity of strikes. He also discusses, with unusual candor, the important distinction between public and private unions, acknowledging the excesses of the former. Although he’s a committed union supporter, his evenhanded treatment of the issues is admirable. For example, during a discussion of charter schools, one of the highlights of the book, he bluntly criticizes teacher unions: “If the teachers’ unions are not willing to relax their unreasonable demands, they will find themselves continuing to lose membership.” In the final analysis, Tull argues that even Democratic Party dominance of Congress and the executive branch wouldn’t be enough to revitalize unions in the United States: They’ll need a thoroughgoing self-reinvention to become relevant again.

A sober, refreshingly nonpartisan discussion of the place of unions in the modern economy.

Tull, Steven CreateSpace (222 pp.) $8.78 paper | $3.99 e-book | Nov. 7, 2013 978-1-4905-5276-7 An analytical appraisal of the state of unions in the United States, including a detailed history of their rise, evolution and eventual decline.

Tull is a lifelong union man who’s now the retired president of a unionized construction company; he also has a doctorate in business administration, with a specialization in labor relations. His debut is both a history and a diagnosis, chronicling the development of unions in the United States as well as dissecting the contemporary diminishment of their power. When unions first emerged as a response to an economy radically transformed by the Industrial Revolution, they were hailed as instruments of worker protection and social progress, supported by both political parties. However, they also cultivated public suspicion and were often seen as selfinterested cabals of greed, communist sympathizers and opponents of free trade. Today, unions suffer from steadily declining membership; increases in low-skilled, immigrant labor; the staunch opposition of the Republican Party; and a massively shifting economy. Tull

HOPE FOR GARBAGE

Tully, Alex Ann Phillips (268 pp.) $7.99 paper | $2.99 e-book | Apr. 17, 2014 978-0-692-02483-6

This Issue’s Contributors #

Tully’s debut novel concerns the coming-of-age of a teenage boy in suburban Cleveland.

Trevor McNulty is somewhat peculiar for a 17-year-old boy. His best friend is a man in his 70s, his childhood involved a mysterious tragic event, and his passion in life is garbage picking.

Discovering the things people are throwing out, Trevor enjoys nothing so much as repairing these items in a run-down garage he calls “the Box.” Whether the end result involves giving the repaired items away to charity or handing them over to his alcoholic uncle (“one of the biggest assholes on the planet”) for resale, Trevor finds the refurbishing process fulfilling. When a mission to rescue an unwanted lawn mower lands Trevor in a fancy neighborhood, he winds up falling in love. Meeting the beautiful Barbara (Bea to friends), with her dyed black hair and luxurious home, he is overcome with the nervous excitement of new love. The two have chemistry together, despite the fact that Bea’s home life isn’t quite as picturesque as it may appear: Her father, Bill, is distant and possibly having an affair, while her mother, Evelyn, is moody and prone to “closet-drinking.”

After Evelyn throws herself at Trevor in a pitiful display of need, Trevor’s odd life becomes surrounded by the difficulties of other people.

What’s a young boy who simply wants to fix things to do? Detailed nicely with the finer points of life in Cleveland, Trevor’s adventure proves believable, his eccentricity notwithstanding. Resourceful and kind, he emerges as a young man worth rooting for even if supporting characters tend to be painted with broad strokes. Bea’s wise African-American housekeeper, Lorene, for example, may strike readers

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as all too stereotypical with her excellent cooking, simple advice and selfless ability to help solve the problems of the white characters around her. Lagging at times amid the back and forth of an adolescent relationship, the story manages to bring in new surprises while keeping Trevor’s past an intriguing secret.

The fulfilling story of a young man who can turn trash into treasure.

The Hopi people of northeastern Arizona regard kachinas as the bearers of fruitful harvests, and from December through July, they hold dances and ceremonies celebrating the spirits’ arrival. Hester, 9, and Honu, 7, learn their family’s values through stories about the kachinas. Each chapter explains a different period during the eight months of kachina, as seen through the children’s eyes. The Hopis regard the kachinas with reverence and respect, and they take great measures to satisfy them.

Additionally, they believe that all children must be on their best behavior. Hester and Honu learn new values as they receive more responsibilities as maturing members of the family. Winther explains that she aims to provide readers with a glimpse of Hopi life and culture with this book, though traditions vary and her characters are fictional. Although many of the children’s experiences are culturally specific, the coming-of-age lessons are universal, and any children of a similar age may appreciate them. Older readers may also find themselves engaged by the unique traditions and stories. Winther offers vibrant, colored pen–and-ink drawings of the different kachina spirits, and the book is sensitively designed, right down to the soft, matte cover.

Aside from a mention of tourists watching the dances, the Hopi group seems to live largely separate from others around them, and readers might find it interesting to know more about how they interact with other cultures. Overall, though, Winther provides a rich, culturally sensitive glimpse of Hopi life.

A beautiful, short book for children ages 7-12, as well as older audiences interested in learning about Native American culture.

THE SECRET DRAWER CLUB

Turner, Barbe Illus. by Holzschuh, Andrew Q. Brown Books Publishing Group (68 pp.) $10.99 paper | $5.99 e-book Jul. 29, 2014 978-1-61254-175-4 An offbeat young boy, a well-liked student and an ingenious teacher meet in this debut children’s book.

Zack “Zim” Zimmerman is one of the most popular fifthgraders at William E. Zane Elementary School. He has a ton of friends, gets good grades and is among the stars of the Knights soccer team. His classmate Maralissa Lou, on the other hand, has a strange name, “two too-large ears and a small crop of unruly brown hair right in the center of the top” of his head, and a rather eclectic wardrobe. When Zim and his friends reject him, their resourceful teacher, Miss Poppycock, creates the Secret Drawer Club to make them all mingle. Poppycock puts a notebook in Zim’s desk and gives him various quests to complete with the other kids. By the end, everyone has learned a little more about each other and about acceptance. Maralissa Lou is a fun, frothy character who’s a great role model for kids: He knows he’s a bit odd, but he accepts his differences with the knowledge that they make him special. Zim is also highly relatable, as he shows that doing the right thing can sometimes be hard; in the end, he learns a lesson and becomes a better person. The prose is a bit basic, but children will be held by Holzschuh’s illustrations, although they might have been lovelier in full color. The foreword and short poem by Coker, however, seem strange additions for a kids’ book, even if the verse is about Maralissa Lou. Overall, though, Turner’s book is a sweet read for children and adults, particularly at the beginning of a new school year.

An imaginative, playful book about accepting and embracing differences.

K i r k us M e di a LL C # President M A RC W I N K E L M A N Chief Operating Officer M E G L A B O R D E KU E H N Chief Financial Officer J ames H ull SVP, Marketing M ike H ejny SVP, Online Paul H offman

THE TIME OF THE KACHINAS

#

Winther, Barbara CreateSpace (108 pp.) $21.95 paper | $5.99 e-book May 23, 2014 978-1-4975-5538-9

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Winther (Duane Pasco: Life as Art, 2013) teaches young readers about the Hopi people’s traditions, including honoring spirits known as kachinas.

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INDIE

Books of the Month LUCY LICK-MENOT AND THE DAY EATERS

BULLETIN OF ZOMBIE RESEARCH

A charming, wildly imaginative introduction to a brave new girl.

Morbidly fascinating, even in its deadpan style; likely to become a staple in zombie collections.

WHIRLWIND & STORM

CHARCUTIER. SALUMIERE. WURSTMEISTER.

Claudine Carmel

Christy J. Leppanen

Charles E. Farnsworth

Francois Paul-Armand Vecchio

First-rate research, writing and presentation.

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A study that may become the new sausage makers’ bible, outstanding in its range, depth and clarity.

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Appreciations:

Peyton Place, Six Decades On B Y G RE G OR Y M C NAMEE

If you are of a certain age—old enough, say, to remember the assassination of JFK, if perhaps not quite old enough to have gone to Woodstock—then chances are that somewhere on your parents’ bookshelf lurked a novel called Peyton Place.

The chances are similarly good that you scanned its pages looking for, well, its more salacious passages, which were plentiful.

But there was more than mere sex between those printed sheets. The child of blue-collar French-Canadian workers in a worn-down New Hampshire factory town, Grace Metalious—born 90 years ago, dying 50 years ago, just shy of her 40th birthday—shared many biographical points in common with Jack Kerouac.

Whereas he took to the road to get away from the squares, though, Metalious stayed put and turned an acid gaze on the people around her. Supposedly pious and proper but in reality seedy and scheming, her neighbors provided grist for a vengeful mill.

Not that Metalious was a paragon herself. She drank—it was alcohol that killed her, in fact, much too young.

She had affairs, swore like a sailor, but she never pretended to be anything other than who she was. Dead broke, she began to write the novel that would become Peyton Place as an unapologetic effort to make a little money, and so, naturally, she peppered it with more sex than many readers were accustomed to seeing in print back in the 1950s.

But more, she told stories of drunkenness, rape, domestic violence, incest, abortion, lies, cover-ups, suicide, murder and more. Some of those sordid episodes took place up on the hill, where the decent people lived. Some of them took place down in the shantytown below, on the fringe of the forest, places that the decent people pretended not to see. Come Sunday, those decent people filed dutifully into the town’s many churches; come Saturday night, they committed enough sins to keep the confessional packed, choking on their pieties.

Metalious’ novel was a slap at the mores of her own time, the age of Eisenhower and a rising Nixon, of gray flannel suits and organization men. But most of it was set in the 1930s, extending American bad behavior into an earlier era. When it appeared in 1956, it was roundly denounced as near pornography. It also sold and sold—60,000 copies in hardcover within two weeks of its release and eventually more than 12 million copies of the paperback.

For all that, and for all that it continues a critique of American life that belongs on the shelf next to the best of John O’Hara, Sherwood Anderson and Edgar Lee Masters, Peyton Place seemed an antique by the end of the 1960s. A grimy sequel had sold less well, and Metalious herself was not around to help keep her book alive, and it died. But not quite: A few literary scholars kept up a discussion about it, and in the 1990s, photocopied chapters began to turn up on reading lists in women’s studies classes. Eventually, in 1999, Northeastern University Press reissued it in its Hardscrabble Books line of novels devoted to New England. It remains in print today, ever reproachful—and ever steamy.

Gregory McNamee is a contributing editor at Kirkus Reviews. |

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Where There’s a Book, There’s a Way.

-5 HC 978-0-316-25389

-0 HC 978-0-316-22075

When you’re stuck in the middle, read...

When you want to stand up for change, read...

When you need a gut check, read...

When you’re feeling like it’s you against the world, read...

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978-0-316-32050 -4 HC

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